Medieval Play

Kenneth Lonergan's Medieval Play, had to have been produced under threat of thumbscrews. Sir Ralph (Josh Hamilton) and Sir Alfred (Tate Donovan) are pillagers of the lowest order -- though they're wise enough to think through the sociopolitical changes the current Hundred Years' War (it's 1376) will bring about: anything to get a laugh, right? Things change, however, when Sir Ralph, motivated by a sudden sense of morality, refuses to rape an abbey full of nuns, and instead contracts his company to Cardinal Robert of Geneva. Unfortunately for him, the church is just as bloody, and his attempts to leave it behind to do real good -- let alone to define it -- are constantly undone by his baser instincts and his poorer timing. This is pretty much what undoes the show, too: Lonergan's self-indulgent direction has created an atmosphere in which there isn't a single joke that doesn't go on at least fifty percent too long (the bland fight sequences, especially between Niccolo and Ralph; a sequence detailing the importance of "modern etiquette"), to say nothing of all the material that's been left in far beyond its expiration date (the whoring and bullying done by some French cardinals, the idol-worship directed at Catherine of Sienna).

[Read full review here]

My Children! My Africa!

If My Children! My Africa! occasionally falls prey to schooling us, it is at least at the hands of the very gifted James A. Williams, and it is at least motivated by the relateable frustrations of his character, Mr. M., who fears what will happen to his country when the youth finally rebel against the inequalities of Apartheid (the play takes place in the autumn of 1984). Clear passions and heartbreaks drive these lessons, as Mr. M. attempts to take two disparate debate students -- his would-be prodigy, the roiling Thami (Stephen Tyrone Williams), and the bright and affable (and white) Isabel (Allie Gallerani) -- and show them that there can be a non-violent path to unity. Fugard has the master playwright's ability to empathize with all of his characters, but given his subject matter, it's easy to assume that he writes to instruct because he truly believes that ignorance is the true root of evil: so it's important that we listen and learn, so that we might move forward together.

[Read full review here]

Title and Deed

Photo: Joan Marcus

Will Eno's Title and Deed seems to operate in a vacuum. Christine Jones's set hangs geometric shapes in mid-air, looking like shrapnel frozen in time, and Ben Stanton's lighting is plain and straightforward: no tricks up these sleeves, it announces. The same can be said for Andrea Lauer's unassuming costume: Conor Lovett's character, after all, can be from anywhere except here, and is meant to be as nondescript as possible. Personally, this sort of work makes me uncomfortable -- fidgety -- and structurally, the show has even less of a narrative than Eno's Thom Pain. Being a critic here is more like being a dream analyst . . . but then again, sometimes dead air is just dead air.

[Read full review here]

Judge Me Paris

Perhaps the greatest compliment I can send Company XIV's way is that this exciting, dance-fusion troupe (under the expert leadership of Austin McCormick) continues to evolve with each new show. Though their latest, Judge Me Paris returns to the well of their 2009 Judgment of Paris, it now does so with the operatic sensibilities that were honed in 2009's Snow White and 2010's Le Cirque Ferrique (indeed, Brett Umlauf and Amber Youell are back as Pallas and Juno), with the classy eroticism mastered in 2010's near-perfect Nutcracker Rouge, and the stunning live cinematography that was utilized in 2011's Lover.Muse.Mockingbird.Whore. (There's live music, too, from the lingerie-and-wigs-clad members of SIREN Baroque: Antonia Nelson, Claire Smith, Kelly Savage, and Anneke Schaul-Yoder.)

Photo/Corey Tatarczuk

Perhaps an even greater compliment, then, is in the way the works of Company XIV remain impossible to set down and describe on the page: such transitory images are as slippery as they are beautiful. Don't miss another chance to see them.

[Read full review here]

A Streetcar Named Desire

Photo: Ken Howard

It's the strength of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire that is reflected in the relative success of this all-black revival, not Emily Mann's directorial decisions. Well, and perhaps a little of Eugene Lee's taut set design, which brings an oubliette-like feel to the home of Stanley (Blair Underwood) and Stella (Daphne Rubin-Vega) that fits the melodrama of Blanche (Nicole Ari Parker), who announces that "Only Mr. Edgar Allen Poe could do it justice." Despite issues having to do with the miscast Rubin-Vega and Mann's interstitial atmosphere-draining vignettes and music, A Streetcar Named Desire still sweats a rawness that's undeniably powerful, tinged as it is by sorrow, delusion, and naked needs. And when two powerful actors collide -- as with Wood Harris's reversal-filled Mitch and Parker's ailing and flailing Blanche -- the audience is liable to break out in sweats, too.

[Read full review here]

(Press ticket; K2)

4000 Miles

Photo: Erin Baiano

There is a great distance between any two people, not just across generations -- Leo (Gabriel Ebert) shows up at his grandmother Vera's (Mary Louise Wilson's) door after going AWOL on a bike trip across America -- but across a gamut of emotional feelings, refracted through Leo's slightly unnatural feelings for his unseen adopted sister (voiced, I believe, by Greta Lee, who appears in the play as an immature, art-freak of a one-night-stand) and his almost unbearable love for his girlfriend Bec (Zoe Winters). Unlike Amy Herzog's previous work, After the Revolution, 4000 Miles doesn't appear to be interested in bridging that distance, so much as in quietly acknowledging it, a task that director Daniel Aukin (This) is well-suited for.

However, for all the naturalistic charm, tenderness, and sweetness of 4000 Miles, the concluding thought is that Herzog appears to have traveled largely on a treadmill. That moment of insight, of connection? It never comes, and with both Bec and Leo running away (to one degree or another) at the end of the play and with the spectre of a life-well-lived-but-also-almost-over hanging over Vera, it feels as if a second act is missing (and this in a play that's already a bit long at a hundred intermissionless minutes). The final monologue -- a sort of eulogy -- suggests that we're not meant to know everything; the catch-22 of Herzog's talented writing is that we want to.

[Read full review here]

($40.00 ticket; H109)

Lonely, I'm Not

Lonely, I'm Not; bored, I am. Paul Weitz's new play at Second Stage isn't awful, it's just awfully empty in its exclamatory presentation of Porter (Topher Grace), a once-vicious, work-obsessed man who has spent the last four years recovering from a nervous breakdown, failed marriage, and current depression. Trip Cullman, rarely the most subtle of directors, only adds fuel to this fire by blaring the titles of each abbreviated scene in neon signage that is both behind and a part of Mark Wendland's set. The final product ends up feeling more like the cover of a magazine, flashy and colorfully designed so as to lure the reader in, than it does like a substantive address on the human condition.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

From the sound of it, Nice Work If You Can Get It is setting itself up from failure: classic Gershwin songs harshly bolted onto a Prohibition-era farce that's adapted by Joe DiPietro from work by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse. Confidence is inspired by director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall, fresh off of Anything Goes, and her leading lady, the do-anything Kelli O'Hara, but there's still that disclaimer-like "if" haunting the title. Rest assured, however, that the result of this "new" musical is nice work -- actually, pretty damn wonderful work. DiPietro has as firm yet playful hand here as he did with Memphis, the songs are more than merely soldered on -- they're actually often comically playing against the original context -- and David Chase's arrangements are terrific (see the dueling "By Strauss" and "Sweet and Lowdown"), and Marshall's direction is quick, lively, and above all, fun, with lots of storytelling stuffed into the extended dance sequences.

The single rough patch rests in this entire affair rests on Matthew Broderick's weary shoulders: he looks bored to be playing yet another variation on Leo Bloom -- he's now a rich simpleton -- and his arms are so stiff that it appears he's trying to bring planking to Broadway, particularly in comparison to full-bodied performers like Michael McGrath, Jennifer Laura Thompson, Robyn Hurder, Chris Sullivan, and Judy Kaye.... I don't ordinarily fall head-over-heels for such airy entertainment -- especially not two-and-half-hours worth -- but Nice Work If You Can Get It has me humming away on cloud nine. Perhaps it's hard to get work these days; at least this musical's making it easy to play.

(Press ticket; N105)

Clybourne Park

It's unprofessional of me, I know, but at a certain point in Clybourne Park, I stopped taking notes. I was just so enjoying Bruce Norris's overlapping dialogue -- lines that would be contentious if the characters bothered to acknowledge one another (they're not supposed to) -- that I allowed myself to get lost. Which winds up, of course, being the sucker-punching point, in that it's necessary to remove oneself from the language to realize just how tangled up we are in the prejudices of the past. Stepping back from the indignation, the thoughtless disrespect, and the ever-present specter of racism, one sees the people who are really at the heart of these issues, how these two irreconcilably different households are actually one and the same, and how "community" is little more than an artificial construct: a fence that we choose to erect among those who are "like" us and those who are not.

[Read full review here]
(Press ticket; L108)

The Columnist

It's not hard to see what attracted David Auburn (Proof) to a historical subject like Joseph Alsop. The twenty odd years covered by The Columnist (1957-1978) were tumultuous ones for America, and Alsop (played here by a tightly wound, ever-graceful John Lithgow) represents a case study in the transition from one era to another, as ambitious journalists like David Halberstam (an earnest Stephen Kunken) and youthful idealists like his step-daughter Abigail (normally played by Grace Gummer; I caught her fine understudy in the role) begin to contest and supplant his domineering hold on "facts," particularly when it comes to Vietnam.

But the reason for columnists in the first place is that facts alone (sadly, in many cases) do not convey a story, and Daniel Sullivan's staid direction makes The Columnist a rather boring affair -- Good Night and Good Luck as opposed to Frost/Nixon. I suspect audiences who lived through these times may find the historical resonances more compelling, even though they're so artlessly thrown in our faces (unlike, say, the far more thrilling and subtle Mad Men). But I doubt that'll be enough to overcome the dramatic inertia of The Columnist, a play that feels as alive as newsprint and about as timeless.

[Read full review here]
(30 Under 30 ticket; Balcony Seat A9)

You Better Sit Down: Tales From My Parents' Divorce

In a departure from 2009's This Beautiful City and 2010's In The Footprint, this latest Civilians show, You Better Sit Down: Tales From My Parents' Divorce makes a drastic reduction in scope and, under Anne Kauffman's direction, does away with all flourishes, arriving at a too personal (and diminutive) result. That said, there's much to be said for the what the ensemble bravely bares: a sort of living museum that hints at the origins and ends of love. The (tran)script has been lovingly polished by the cast (blemishes and all), and while it's very specific, it's also very sincere. At worst, Tales from My Parents' Divorce will at least encourage children in the audience to call their own divorced parents for a more accurate history lesson; at best, it's an hour spent in the company of charming, distant relatives, here to remind you that we've all got stuff.

[Read full review here]

Peter and the Starcatcher

There's a star being caught in Peter and the Starcatcher, and it ain't the unnamed Boy (Adam Chanler-Berat) who will, by play's end, become Peter Pan. Which is not to say that Chanler-Berat and his cohorts, Carson Elrod and David Rossmer ("We're lost!" "Boys!" runs one of the knowing quips in the show) aren't entertaining. But in this prequel, lovingly and creatively adapted by Rick Elice from the loving and creative novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, the star is, as ever, our delightfully villainous Captain Hook -- or should I say, Black Stache (Christian Borle), since it's not until a remarkable, scene-stealing moment late in Act II that he is "disarmed." Not only does Borle enhance any ensemble he's a part of (there's a delirious mermaid sequence), but he solidifies all of his solo sequences, making quick work of the script's alliterations and even quicker work of his character's own perpetual flubs ("Abandon spleen!" he cries, as the Neverland begins to sink). It takes an expert at physical comedy to appear to be so effortlessly clumsy, be it his attempts to strike a pose or simply to rhyme in verse, and though he jests that iambic pentameter would be box-office poison, I expect that a healthy dose of Mr. Borle is antidote enough to salvage any scene. (That explains why Peter and the Starcatcher is so much honest-to-goodness fun: there are no scenes in need of salvage.)

Peter Pan brags that he'll never grow up; with theater as good as this, audiences will never have to.
[Read full review here]
[Win two free tickets here]

The Big Meal

The Big Meal shifts across eighty years of dinners, starting with a random pickup between Sam and his waitress, Nicole, and ending with an epically casual goodbye that confronts death as powerfully as anything I've seen on stage since Young Jean-Lee's Lear. He does so with spot-on language as strong as anything from natural contemporaries like Annie Baker, and if some find his characters a bit thin, they're missing the universal appeal of Dan LeFranc's approach. As for Sam Gold, there's simply not enough I can say about this director's ability to stage concept-heavy pieces in a fashion that keeps the emphasis on the characters.

Even if you absolutely abhor structural works, I strongly recommend The Big Meal. Knowing that the last meal is only just around the corner -- but not for whom -- keeps the stakes (or steaks) almost unbearably tense, and watching life find a way to bloom regardless is an interesting affair. Time flies by, but it's hard to register those changes in ourselves: not so in LeFranc's world, where characters go from hating squalling gibbonous brats to monkeying right along with them, where fractures mend in a tragic instant (or fester in fast-forward), and where memories (of, say, Barcelona) revise themselves in real-time. 

[Read full review here]

Planet Egg

More polished than your average tech-demo/theater-hybrid, Planet Egg takes up the baton from where the delightful Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer left it, and crafts a two-man (and one Foley woman) performance of puppet cinema, in which a film is made before your eyes. Looking like a stop-motion short (akin to something you might see at, say, a Spike and Mike festival), Planet Egg is a dialogue-less ballad between a socket-faced, red-ribbon-legged creature who crashes on the titular planet and the lonely white radish-like creature that lives in a fortress made of broccoli. (There are also banana seesaws, carrot benches, and angry mobs of miniature mushroom creatures that like to cry out "Shroom!") It's a whimsical production, less than an hour long, but at the moment, it's a little scrambled.

[Read full review here]

The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew can be a very funny play -- and probably should be, lest one linger too long on the sexist implications that one either believes are being mocked by Shakespeare or taken to heart -- but Arin Arbus's manic direction for Theatre for a New Audience cannot seem to bear to let well enough alone. Despite having an excellent center in the boisterous -- but ultimately not a buffoon -- Petruchio (Andy Grotelueschen) and his sharp-tongued, iron-jawed would-be-wife Kate (Maggie Siff, who has well-played similar roles on Mad Men and Sons of Anarchy), this production shoots off in a dozen directions at once. Even the program's dramaturgical notes offer only "perspectives" from other scholars, there's no thesis, no backbone.

Petruchio's reverse-psychology and fact-denying wooing are a comic delight, as always, made all the stronger by Groteleuschen's absolute confidence and by Siff's perfect partnering, from gasping double-takes and resolute put-downs to some far-flung spittle and physical comedy. John Keating (who plays Tranio), John Christopher Jones (as old Gremio), and Saxon Palmer (as Hortensio) get in on the more exaggeratedly fun aspects of the wooing, but the rest of the ensemble is a mixed bag, ranging from the diligently expository servant, Biondello (Varin Ayala), to Kate's thanklessly bland father, Baptista (Robert Langdon Lloyd), and simply unbelievable wooers, Lucentio (Denis Butkus) and Kate's sister, Bianca (Kathryn Saffell). You can literally feel the energy draining from the stage when the two leads are absent, which is further evidence that Arbus is not entirely sure what story she aims to communicate with this version of Shrew.

[Read on]

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess

I think we're well past spoilers on the plot of Porgy and Bess, but at the climactic point of the play, at which Porgy (Norm Lewis) has pulled a knife from his leg-brace and stabbed his crass rival Crown (Phillip Boykin) to death, the point at which he shouts, to his beloved Bess (Audra McDonald) that now she has a man, I started cracking up. I wouldn't read too much into this, or Diane Paulus's direction, as I was the only one in the theater to do so, but it left me puzzled as to why so many people have talked up, if not this production then at least the history of, Porgy and Bess.

But I don't care about the racial elements nor the wishy-washy religion (I almost lost it during "Oh, Doctor Jesus," too): not when I'm struggling with the ambivalence of the inhabitants of Catfish Row, South Carolina, ciphers of people who happen to sing very high and very low notes. I've never felt so disconnected from the emotions of a musical's characters. I longed for supertitles, groping as I was for some of the words sung in that super-high register or lost within the keening, dissonant chants of the community. I ached, too, for some sort of synopsis that might explain what I'd clearly missed, what with the irreverent presence of the devilish Sporting Life (David Alan Grier) and abrupt deaths of lovers Clara and Jake (Nikki Renee Daniels and Joshua Henry). 

Rather than critique -- honestly, there are people who prefer this type of artificial musical to the honesty of Once? -- it's safer to say, instead, that this medium of storytelling just isn't for me. Beyond Ronald K. Brown's lovely choreography, Porgy and Bess is just a lot of noise, with no soul or real substance to glue it all together.

Blast Radius

Photo/Deborah Alexander

This engaging work from Gideon Productions taps into the themes of humanity that made Mac Rogers's previous foray into science-fiction (Universal Robots) so compelling, and is both a heartbreakingly bleak look at our rebellion and, like third-season Battlestar Galactica, a useful mirror in understanding the nature of terrorism. (Humanity's last chance is to gather fifty-one suicide bombers in an attempt to topple one of the massive hives of the alien invaders.)

Although there's no need to have seen Advance Man in order to enjoy this sequel, those who have will appreciate all of the distress set designer Sandy Yaklin has put into this once-charming home in Coral Gables, FL, as well as the murkier lighting that Jennifer Linn Wilcox has brought to the clandestine meetings occurring there. Those just tuning in, however, will thrill to see the evolution of these characters. The Honeycomb's ambassador, Conor (Jason Howard), has now fully acclimated to his human body, putting his newfound appreciation of "individuality" to the task of loving, body and soul, his fellow human ambassador, Abbie (David Rosenblatt). Meanwhile, as Conor grows more human, mourning the illness afflicting his proxy (and Abbie's actual) mother Amelia (Kristen Vaughan), Abbie comes across as a spoiled brat, abusing his powers in the hopes of squashing the futile resistance he believes (correctly) his sister Ronnie (Becky Byers) to be mounting, convinced that humanity will only be saved once it no longer exists -- i.e., once it has been assimilated into a beautiful, ever-loving, single mind. As for Ronnie, her teenage rebellion has blossomed into a fully justified war, one in which she no longer has to stand alone, well-matched as she is by the wisdom of her co-leader, Shirley (Nancy Sirianni), and the strength of her beloved Peck (Adam Swiderski).


[Read on]

(Press ticket)

The Lady from Dubuque

There's much to appreciate about the message at the muscular heart of The Lady from Dubuque, particularly David Esbjornson's fluid staging, the ease of which only serves to cast the two visitors with more menace. (Ever seen the film Funny Games? It's a bit like that, in that the calm veneer simultaneously masks and reveals the horror.) And Signature Theatre's revival boasts a terrific ensemble: not just the deeply wounded Hayden, utterly relaxed Alexander, scene-stealing James, and mighty Robins (who one can easily imagine doing true justice to Wit), but also Thomas Jay Ryan and Catherine Curtin as an annoyingly meddlesome couple. (It's much harder to get a read on C. J. Wilson's brutish Edgar and his more-than-a-floozy girlfriend, played by Tricia Paoluccio.) But much of the show's second act revolves around blind hysterics and an unfocused script that makes the first act's fourth-wall-breaking winks seem out of place. Albee notes that he lets the characters speak; perhaps he should have stepped in as an editor, then.

[Read on]

That Beautiful Laugh

I think I've figured out why some people are afraid of clowns: it's because they're kids who have never grown up. It can be a little frightening to see adults so recklessly free, so literally lost in their own world; what is excusable in children as an exploratory, exhilarating phase is, all grown up, is almost menacingly silly. (Inane is only a letter removed from insane.) This is worth noting not because Orlando Pabotoy's clown show, That Beautiful Laugh, nor his talented performers, are bad -- they are quite good! -- but because the looseness of the affair provokes a certain tension, even at La MaMa: they might do anything to get a laugh!

Over the course of slightly more than an hour, we'll join the brave yet comparatively incompetent Flan (Alan Tudyk), shy yet physically dominant Ian (Carlton Ward), and deliberate yet excitable Darla Waffles Something (Julia Ogilvie) as they show off their comic repertoire to an unborn egg, hoping to make it fly, either through physical or levit(y)ational means. There's a dance with stilts, and a creepy shadow-puppet song about the "Scary City," plus a "rule of threes" series of performances that include Flan's cryptic non-act (that may actually be fairly impressive); Darla's nonsensical "feats," like attempting to yo-yo with one's mouth; and Ian's "DAHN-gerous" arsenal of the everyday: a clothes hangar, plastic bag, and hula hoop -- kids, do not try this at home!

[Read on]

Venus in Fur

Hot damn; I still love Nina Arianda's performance as much as when I first encountered Venus in Fur two years ago at CSC, but unfortunately, I've yet to see anyone who could match up to her -- even as a submissive! At the performance I caught, Arianda's Vanda was up against Hugh Dancy's understudy, Mark Alhadeff, who can't handle a live wire like Arianda. While her wattage fluctuates throughout the night, his remains static; only occasionally is there enough friction to actually spark some tension between the two. When he says that "There can be nothing more sensuous than pain, nothing more pleasurable than degradation," they're just words, but when she quips that "You don't have to tell me about sadomasochism, I'm in the theater," every word lands a punch. And while it's true that she's meant to be the more extroverted, energetic of the two, from the moment she runs into the theater with an umbrella, squealing her apologies and stripping to her lingerie, Alhadeff must do more than play a lethargic opposite; at some point, mustn't he feel the thrill that the audience receives from Arianda's deft command? As she often instructs, he must be appear ambiguous, not ambivalent. 

[Read on]

(Press; twelfth row, left side)