OK!

"Oklahoma" directed by Daniel Fish at St. Ann's Warehouse is a mixed bag.  To begin with, the Rebecca Naomi Jones who plays Laurie is such a downer that none of it makes sense.  No Shirley Jones she. We have to fall in love with Laurie for the play to click.   On the other hand, I am absolutely in love with the actor who plays Curly, Damon Daunno, who was also rock-star magnetic in Hadestown at NYTW (but totally wasted in the dreadful "The Lucky Ones" at Ars Nova).  And Mary Testa brings much needed energy as Aunt Eller. The rest of the performances are pretty stock including the wheelchair bound Ali Stroker as Ado Annie.  Then there is the excruciating dream sequence, a ballet in the original production and movie but here a  modern dance number choreographed by John Heginbotham  that features lots of prancing and writhing around on the floor. No.  My heart went out to the lovely young dancer Gabrielle Hamilton.  I've also left out attributing the production to  Rodgers and Hammerstein because the current staging couldn't be further from their musical.  I did love the old-timey band of barn dance musicians on stage but much of the singing can only be described as caterwauling, a waste of some excellent vocal talent.  And the blood-splashed ending was more grotesque than I'm sure the original creators had in mind. The production dragged on in spots, specifically the darker moments with Jud Fry. We don't need to be literally kept in the dark for a long stretch, a few minutes would have done the trick. Or maybe the whole play should have been done in the dark?

A very slight play that I don't really recommend unless one is exploring ones queer identity is "Plot Points In Our Sexual Development" by Miranda Rose Hall at the LTC3.  The director Margot Bordelon made a lot of busy work for the two very fine actors, Jax Jackson and Marianne Rendon, for what is essentially a series of monologues about their growing and developing awareness of their sexuality and how it effects their relationship.

Daniel Alexander Jones as Jomama Jones in his "Black Light" at Greenwich House is pure cabaret. Jomama Jones along with her band and back-up singers entertain with a show that is pure camp.  It does addresse racism in the patter between songs  but I preferred Jone's full length autobiographical play "The Book of Daniel" which dealt with the same issues and felt more complete as a play.  But bravo!

I'm not an opera connoisseur but the staging of the 1981 Philip Glass opera "Satyagraha" BAM about Gandhi was nonsensical.  The opera is about Gandhi's years in South Africa, from 1893 to 1914 where he formed his guiding philosophy of "truth force" ( Satyagraha ) and fought for the civil rights of Indians.  This Swedish import incorporates the marvelous Cirkus Cirkor into the Folkoperan opera.  The circus acts are presumably meant to be an echo of the relationship between risk and payoff in Gandhi's life and the emphasis of the Bhagavad Gita on delicate balance but are ultimately distracting and ... no... not great. So much walking on balls and business with blocks of wood and a big pile of yarn. The libretto, adapted by Constance DeJong from the Bhagavad Gita, a classic of Hindu scripture and a foundational guide for Gandhi's activism, and, sung by Leif Aruhn-Solen(Gandhi), Karolina Blixt among others, was gorgeous.  There were many moments when I preferred to close my eyes to the business on stage and just listen.

And, finally, Theresa Rebeck's "Bernhardt/Hamlet" is an old-fashioned play with old-fashioned performances and it's just fine. It's kind of like sinking into a comfortable and well-worn armchair for 2 1/2 hours.  I'm not at all surprised that the director Moritz von Stuelpnagel is an old hand at directing Noel Coward.  Except for too much fluttering of the arms in Act I, Janet McTeer, an unlikely choice to play the sensual 5'3" Divine Sarah, delivers with a nuanced portrait of the aging actress attempting to revive her career by mounting a production of "Hamlet" with herself in the title role.  Much talk is given to her difficulties with Shakespeare's verse and hilarity ensues.  Dylan Baker as the hammy veteran actor Constant Coquelin is pitch perfect but the performance that really stands out is that of Jason Butler Harner as the playwright Edmond Rostand who was possible Bernhardt's lover.  He's the kind of actor who becomes the role almost as if by osmosis.  In looking at the program I see that he has been in numerous plays I have seen and loved over the years and I can't for the life of me remember having seen him before. Bravo!  My kind of actor. 

"The Ferryman," "The Ferryman," "The Ferryman"

Although I enjoyed Jez Butterworth's previous plays that made it to Broadway "Jerusalem" and  "The River" temendously,  "The Ferryman" is such a glorious evening of theatre [three and a quarter hours worth that fly by] that it surpasses anything he has done before. "Jerusalem" was such a tour-de-force for that grandstanding Anglo-American actor Mark Rylance that the other actors had almost no chance to breath their parts.  "The River" was more or less a showcase for the always amiable and attractive Hugh Jackman.  But the cast of "The Ferryman," which originated in London and is here directed by Sam Mendes, is a true ensemble, each one superb.  Paddy Considine as Quinn Carney the head of a large Irish family and Laura Donnelly as Caitlin Carney his sister-in-law lead the cast.  Fionnula Flanagan,  Dearbhla Malloy and Mark Lambert represent the older generation, all established Irish actors of some note, but even the young 'uns, many of them American and new to the cast for the Broadway production incorporate seamlessly into the mix.  Even those not familiar with the Irish "troubles" will have no problem following the story which revolves around the disappearance of Caitlin's husband 10 years prior and the events that ensue when his executed body is found in a bog. The different political leanings of the members of both the older and the younger members of this large extended family are front and center.  This devastating play, rich in language, political insight and human tragedy, is a must see. 

The Russian "Measure for Measure" at BAM Harvey comes close (Shakespeare ... hello ...) although I would have enjoyed it a tad more if it it hadn't been in Russian and the supertitles had been translated from the original English and not from the Russian translation of the English.  The cast, all from The Pushkin Theatre Moscow, are directed by Cheek by Jowl's Declan Donnellan. Anna Vardevanian as Isabella particularly stands out.  This is physical theatre. The staging is minimal and the ensemble at times appear as Greek chorus but it all comes together cohesively and times one even forgets that the actors are not speaking in English.

More or less in keeping with "Measure for Measure," "The Bacchae" also at BAM Harvey is a physical production. Anne Bogart directs the  Siti production of the Euripides play at times almost as it were a  dance.  The story of Dionysus arriving in Thebes as a human and wreaking havoc is a classic but always has the ability to catch one by surprise with it's brutality. The work of the very fine ensemble is at times humorous and at other times shocking, sending spasms of fright and fear through the body of the audience like an electric shock. Euripides would have approved.

Bedlam's "Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet" disappoints.  I, followers of this blog know, am a huge fan of Bedlam.  They have their hits and misses and this one is in my opinion a miss, albeit a glorious one.  The idea of mashing together "Uncle Vanya" and "Romeo and Juliet" is a curious one.  I did not get it.  Call me thick.  Performances, as always, are excellent, notably Susannah Millonzi as Sonya and Edmund Lewis as Vanya and the direction by company founder Eric Tucker is mostly excellent except for another Ivo Van Hove moment of trashing the stage.  Perhaps the less said, the better.  I look forward to their next production which I hope is as awesome as their "Pygmalian" earlier this year.

The Trisha Brown Dance Company at BAM Fisher is an example of a rudderless endeavor.  Not every dance company is capable of performing up to the standards set for them by their creators after said creators are gone.  Merc Cunningham was right to say "no mas" although several of his dancers have gone on to start companies of their own where they continue to perform his choreography and this is fine.  Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal has managed to hang on to magic of it's creator as evidenced in their recent revisiting of Cafe Muller/The Rite of Spring at BAM and even that felt like something was missing.  Not all the dancers who currently make up the TBDC are equal and it is evident in the three pieces performed at the Fisher.  I don't believe that a couple of them would have made the cut had she been alive.  "Ballet" from 1968 which opens the program and relies heavily on video screen shots of the Trisha Brown from the 60's is o.k. but Cecily Brown lacks the presence of Brown.  The second dance "Pamplona Stones" from 1974 features two dancers of mismatched ability and, although retaining some of the intended humor of the original, is awkward as a result.  The final dance of the night "Working Title" from 1985 is the most successful and the company performs it well but there are too many pauses to "move furniture" as it were and this breaks the continuity to the extent that we in the audience are in danger of losing interest.  The black and white photo of Trisha Brown in the program has more life than the entire evening.


And just for laughs see "Head over Heels." This Broadway play directed by Michael Mayer["Hedwig and the Angry Inch," "Spring Awakening"] with music by The Go-Go's about a Medieval Kingdom where everything is topsy-turvy and everyone seems to be questioning their sexuality is enchanting, engaging and fun.  Have relatives or friends coming to town? Take them!

The Time Is Right For Some Collective Rage and a Reexamination of the 14th Amendment

Now seems to be the precise time for a production of "Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties" Jen Silverman's angry queer play directed by Mike Donahue for the MCC Theatre.  The acting is outrageously good.  Dana Delaney is the surprise here.  Who knew she was one to take on a role in such a play after plum in popular mainstream shows China Beach and Desperate Housewives.  She goes full out here as Betty 1, the arguably angriest of the Betties, an UES housewife who falls for her queer black boxing instructor Betty 5, played by Chaunte Wayans (yes of that Wayans family).  Lea Delaria (Betty 4), and Anna Villafane (Betty 3) are edgy and sharp as the star-crossed lovers of the play but I think my favorite performance came from Adina Verson as Betty 2, another privileged but decidedly mousier housewife who discovers her vagina.  Yes, reader, I did write that.  If you are shocked easily by graphic language then I suggest you steer clear of this production which culminates in a loose interpretation of the tinker's play from "A Midsummer Night's Dream," here called variously "Pyramid and Thursday" and, my favorite, "Burmese and Frisbee." Pratfalls and bad behavior ensues. But this is ultimately a play about angry women and what happens when they are pushed to the edge by their partners and society.

It's also the right moment in time to examine the 14th amendment in Heidi Schreck's "What the Constitution Means to Me" at The New York Theatre Workshop.  Directed by Oliver Butler and performed by Shreck herself, the play takes us back 30 years to when she made money for college by debating the 14th Amendment at various American Legion halls around the country.  The play shifts back and forth from those days to the present as she continues to explore the meaning of the 14th Amendment, finishing with a real time debate with a 15 year old girl (Rosdely Ciprain at the performance I attended).  Much food for thought here(did the 14th Amendment originally apply to women and people of color, for instance?).  I must also mention Mike Iveson who Schreck essentially uses as a prop until the moment when he is cast into the spotlight to share his experience as an LBGTQ man and stops the show. And did I say mention that you will also be very entertained?

Jonathan Payne's "The Revolving Cycles" at Playwright's Realm directed by Awoye Timpo is an ernest play about racism in America that doesn't hit the mark.  Again, as in "Fairview" Jackie Sibblies Drury's much overpraised play at the Soho Rep earlier this year, a playwright breaks the fourth wall and attempts to draw the audience in without earning it. There have been far better plays this year by black playwrights about the black experience in America including Aleshea Harris's "Is God Is" at the Soho Rep and Antoinette Nwandu's "Pass Over" at LTC.   Let's acknowledge fine playwriting when we see it and stop giving slaps on the back to playwrights of color for inferior efforts.  Two terrific performances keep "Revolving Cycles" afloat, that of Kara Young as Karma, a street kid trying to uncover the mystery of her one-time foster brother's disappearance, and Deonna Bouye shape-shifting in multiple roles. 

In "Girl From the North Country" at The Public Theatre, Conor McPherson brings his rural Irish characters and Dylan songs to  Duluth, Minnesota during the Depression.  The play itself is clunky and forced but the arrangements of the Dylan songs are divine as is the dancing by the ensemble cast with standout performances by Mare Winningham, Jeannette Bayardelle and Todd Almond who delivers a bring-down-the-house interpretation of "Duquesne Whistle." If you love Dylan and don't mind sitting through the labored plot surrounding the songs this may be enough.  It wasn't quite enough for me.

Too Much, Too Little

Do you know that feeling when you're late to the party and then feel like you shouldn't have bothered to show up at all?  That's how I felt about 10 minutes into Tracy Letts' "Mary Page Marlowe" at The 2nd Stage.  Even the usually reliably fine direction of Lila Neugebauer failed to make this play feel more than a poorly written soap opera following the mostly tragic life of one Mary Page Marlowe from her teen years to her cancerous 60's. Although there were some decent performances, especially that of Blaire Brown as the aging Mary Page, most of the casting was a cheap attempt to elevate the production by casting celebrity children and television actors. That said, Tatiana Maslany from "Orphan Black" was fine as Mary Page at age 27 and 36.  But Meryl Streep's daughter Grace Gummer as Mary Page's mother Roberta, continues to demonstrate that the best actors do not necessarily beget great actors. This is the second play in which she has underwhelmed me, the first being Stoppard's "Arcadia" where her acting chops were well beneath her cast mates.  Letts' play is somewhat copying the device that Clare Baronn used to great success in "I'll Never Love Again" where she cast her teenage self with actors of all ages, sexes and ethnicities to brilliant effect.  Here, Letts casts several actors as Mary Page at different stages of her life.  But some of the actors blur together and don't present any great age difference.  It might have been better for Letts to stick to one or two actors and flesh out the play which feels like a series of scenes strung together.  I also had the take-away that Letts doesn't really understand women.  This is an occasion, another example being "The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Grace B. Matthias" last year at Playwright's Realm,  where a woman's story is perhaps not best serviced by a male playwright.

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

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.

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.

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.