Sump'n Like Wings

Lynn Riggs (1899-1954) wrote 30 plays, a few of which were produced on Broadway, along with screenplays and poetry. Nowadays he is known--when he is known at all--for having written Green Grow the Lilacs, which Rodgers and Hammerstein turned into Oklahoma!

A gay man and a Native American, Riggs had a strong sense of "otherness" and how it affected people's lives. He often wrote about Oklahoma, where he was born, in the early 1900s, and he was frank about the ways limited opportunity and frequent violence circumscribed the lives of many people, particularly women.

Joy Avigail Sudduth, Lukey Klein,
Julia Brothers, Mariah Lee
Photo: Maria Baranova 

In Sump'n Like Wings, currently being produced by the invaluable Mint Theatre, Riggs focuses on 16-year-old Willie, whose bitter mother is trying desperately to rein in her daughter's energy, desire, and anger. Willie's mother wants to protect Willie from the dangers of the world--i.e., men--but Willie is far from rein-in-able, and she breaks out of the role life has given her, at great cost.

This important theme is familiar from other Mint productions, including Becomes a Woman, by Betty Smith, and The King of Spain's Daughter, by Teresa Deevy. Unfortunately, Sump'n Like Wings is not at their level. It has one-dimensional characters, awkward dialogue, and weird plotting. On the other hand, it does do an excellent job of depicting the claustrophobia that results from women's legitimate fear of men. In the world of this play, fear of violence--particularly rape--runs women's lives. 

Riggs has little use for straight men. The one decent man in the play is a gentle bachelor who is described in the script as walking "about with quick nervous steps--like a bird," i.e., gay.

This production is not up to The Mint's usual standards. The acting is hampered by the dialect and accents used in the play, e.g.:

OSMENT: Well, she done it! I'm as shore of it as I'm shore of goin to heaven when I die—

CLOVIS: Well, I doan know about you and heaven—

MRS. CLOVIS: Pass me sump'n, fer heaven's sake!

And while, granted, the actors don't have a lot to work with, they rarely rise above the material. 

The overall result is an opportunity to catch a museum piece, but that's about all. I wish the Mint had done Green Grow the Lilacs instead, but perhaps they someday will.

Wendy Caster

Honor

What is honor? That's a particularly relevant question as we head into the election. Is honor reputation? Or is it something between a person and herself? What value does honor have? Do most people care about honor?

Dictionaries define honor as being the same as reputation (e.g., "high respect; great esteem," "good name") and as being more about ethics (e.g., "adherence to what is right," "integrity").* While these definitions are different, they are not mutually exclusive.

Altman, Hamilton, Blaylock
Photo: Marjorie Phillips Elliott

Honor, a one-act written and directed by T.J. Elliott and presented by Knowledge Workings Theater Company, utilizes both definitions, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes separately.

As the show starts, Ludwig Cade (John Blaylock), General Counsel of an unnamed company, and Ronnee Emerson (Alinca Hamilton), Associate General Counsel, are sitting in a conference room, waiting for Don Troy (Ed Altman), former VP and now "R&D Consultant." Don shows up, cheerful and obnoxious and full of himself. Ludwig says that they have two things to discuss, and before he can get any further, Don hijacks the conversation. When Ludwig is finally able to get the meeting back on track, they get to the subject at hand:

Ronnee (to Don): ... you will be very glad to hear that the investigation is concluded. (Consults paper) And we found no support for the accusations that you helped in any bullying of any employee.

Don: (Beat) The accusations against me were false? (Exhales) False accusations. That’s your verdict?

Ludwig: The investigators did not find them to be true.

Don: Which is generally the definition of false....

Ludwig: Unsupported and false are not synonyms…

We gradually learn the details of the situation, although there is disagreement as to their meaning. 

Don and Ronnee debate the meaning of honor at length, both evidencing an unusual (and unconvincing) familiarity with The Iliad and The Odyssey. They also debate the meaning of facts and how the world looks different and is different for White men and Black women (Ronnee is Black). Ludwig is more pragmatic and not interested in theoretical conversations.

Altman, Hamilton, Blaylock
Photo: Marjorie Phillips Elliott

This is a good set-up, with a lot of potential, and I'd say that this production achieves maybe 60% of that potential. First, the play itself needs to be better focused. While Don's many tangents are sometimes interesting and always help define his character, there are too many of them. Some of the actual useful information gets lost in the noise. I would also wish that the set-up be streamlined and that the rest of the play take its time a little more. 

The direction could also be better focused, as could the acting. The physical expression of the acting is sometimes neglected and sometimes just wrong. In particular, Ronnee is too casual in her physicality and her speech. Being a Black woman and a corporate lawyer generally requires a tremendous amount of care and some formality, along with a high emotional cost. 

While Don's speech and movement can certainly be justified, I would have found the play more compelling if he weren't so committed to being obnoxious. We are told that he is very popular, but we see little reason why. Ludwig feels like a third wheel and a bit generic. Also, Elliott has given Ludwig stomach problems; they might reflect character, but they come across as the playwright trying to get the character out of the room.

The strengths of the play lie in its situation, its embrace of ambiguity, and its recognition that people are, well, people. Complicated, self-focused, messy. As Ronnee says:

When did I realize that Martha Wilton was doing things for her own advantage? I realized it the same moment I realize that in everyone. The second they open their mouth. Everyone is always doing things for their own advantage.

And the way Hamilton says these lines reflects a strength of the play: not cynical, just real.

Wendy Caster

*Definitions from https://www.google.com/search?q=honor+def and https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/honor.

American Classical Orchestra 40th Anniversary Concert

The American Classical Orchestra (ACO), described by its founder/conductor as "our labor of love," utilizes period instruments to better produce classical pieces as the composers composed them. Their 40th Anniversary Concert included Mozart's Andante in C Major for Flute & Orchestra, with Sandra Miller as soloist. Miller is a founder of and principal flute for the ACO, and she was wonderful on the wooden period flute she used. 

Sandra Miller

The program also included Mozart's Andante from Serenade, K. 388, played by the woodwinds section, again with period instruments. I don't have the musical vocabulary to discuss in detail period instruments vs modern ones, but I do know that they are harder to play--and particularly harder to play loud enough to be heard in a good-sized auditorium. The piece was completely audible, present, and beautiful. I'm sure the superb acoustics of Alice Tully Hall enhanced the performance.

Thomas Crawford

The program ended with Beethoven's 7th Symphony, on which ACO did an okay job. The experience may have been injured by Crawford's prefatory remarks, which included snippets of the piece with explanations of how they were written and why they were notable. The remarks were interesting in themselves, but acted as spoilers. In addition, the performance lacked oomph. 

Wendy Caster

In Search of Elaina

Annette is winning at life. She has just negotiated a major promotion; her boyfriend Charles is attractive, considerate, and wealthy; their major life challenge is whether to stay in the Upper West Side or move to Greenwich Village. Then Annette receives a text: her high school boyfriend has been killed in a car accident. Her earlier life, which she has happily abandoned, comes flooding back. 

Garrett Richmond,  Aimée Fortier

Photo:  Al Foote III

Annette decides not to go to the memorial, in California, ostensibly because she'd have trouble getting back to New York in time for work on Monday. But Charles talks her into going back and then talks her into his coming along. He tells her, "I’d just like to see where you’re from." She answers, "I'm from here now!"

After a cross-country plane ride, followed by driving a long, snaking road up the side of a mountain, they are in the world of Annette's childhood: rural, poor, lacking resources and opportunity, battered by drug addiction. Annette's old friends greet her with differing levels of enthusiasm; she hasn't been in touch in ten years. And, to Charles's astonishment, they call her "Annie Rae."

Rachel Griesinger, Aimée Fortier

Photo:  Al Foote III

To describe what follows--culture clashes, drunken confidences, old wounds reopened, secrets revealed--sounds cliché, but in Kara Ayn Napolitano's exceptional new play, In Search of Elaina, everything is new, real, and earned. The play is well-served by excellent direction, by Joy Donze, and vivid, convincing acting. As Annette/ Annie Rae, Aimée Fortier moves seamlessly from being a sophisticated professional in her early 30s to a confused, yearning teenager and back again. The rest of the cast is also excellent: Greg Carere, Jamie Effros, Alexandra Gellner, Rachel Griesinger, Garrett Richmond, and Lee Tyler. It is a first-class production of a first-class play. 

(For tickets, click here.)

Wendy Caster

Attorney-Client

One is not supposed to focus so much on trees that you miss the forest, right? I get that. But what if they're really big, ugly, focus-grabbing trees?

I suspect that Client-Attorney, Alex Ladd's drama at Theater for the New City, is a solid, thoughtful play with a careful structure and something important to say. But I don't know for sure because the same repetitive, abrasive, and unpleasant music is played during every scene change. And there are a lot of scene changes. The music neither enhances nor complements the show. It does, however, interrupt the play's rhythms and knock the audience out of the world of the play and the characters. By the end of the show, I was sticking my fingers in my ears each time a scene ended. If I had been able to quietly consider what had just occurred before each scene change, this review would be much more useful. As it is, the deeply annoying music/tree made it impossible for me to fully appreciate the play/forest. 

The basic set-up of the play is that two young men, one White and rich (Joss Gyorkos), the other Black and poor (Lovell Adams-Gray), are arrested for a hit-and-run car accident in which a young woman is injured. The White man's father gets him the best defense that money can buy, with the attorney also played by Adams-Gray. The Black man ends up with a public defender (also played by Gyorkos), who does what he can to help him but is limited by a lack of resources and the built-in inequities of the justice system. The young men are pressured to behave in the ways their lawyers think best, which have little to do with who the young men are, what they want, and whether or not they are guilty. 

All of this is, of course, underlined and misshapen by systemic racism. This theme is more referred to than developed. That the white guy is rich and the black guy poor stacks the deck. And the constant costume changes (accompanied by that damn music), don't allow the impact of the show to build as it might. While switching off the roles might be fun for the actors, I suspect a four-person cast, with a more streamlined presentation, would be better for the play.

Adams-Gray, Gyorkos

Adams-Gray and Gyorkos acquit themselves pretty well, although Gyorkos's accent for the rich white guy is puzzling at best. The direction, by Pat Golden, has strengths and weaknesses. She has helped the actors develop well-differentiated characters, and that is certainly a plus. But she clearly feels a need to avoid a static stage picture, and has the characters--the white guy in particular--get up and walk around for no reason other than to have someone moving on stage. But the writing is sufficiently interesting to keep the audience's attention all by itself.

Please remember to take this review with a huge grain of salt. The music was so off-putting to me that I just couldn't give the show my full concentration. If the creators promised to remove the music, or replace it with much better, more varied music, I would actually like to give the play a second chance.

Wendy Caster 

The Ask

There's a little gem playing at the Wild Project through September 28th. One set, 80 minutes, with terrific and compassionate writing (Matthew Freeman), directing (Jessi D. Hill), and acting (Colleen Litchfield and Tony-nominated Betsy Aidem, both of whom were in Leopoldstadt on Broadway).

Aidem, Litchfield
Photo: Kent Meister

Tanner (the vivid and canny Litchfield), a nonbinary person who uses "they/their" pronouns, is a fund-raiser with the ACLU (where playwright Freeman worked for years) and they have come to the home of Greta (the compelling and wry Aidem), a long-time generous donor.

Greta wants to be heard, seriously heard. She feels abandoned by the ACLU on a personal and political level. She argues that the ACLU is suffering from mission creep by expanding the issues the organization addresses. In addition, as a liberal, second-generation feminist in a world of changing beliefs, customs, language, and even gender, she feels marginalized. She used to be the cool one.

Tanner  has to treat Greta with kid gloves, but they also want to be honest and not to disrespect their own being and beliefs. It's a tightrope for sure!

What makes this piece way better than it might have been is that Freeman doesn't fall into the simple equation of "rich oblivious person bad/hip nonbinary person good." Greta has legitimate points to make, and Freeman lets her make them. Tanner has legitimate points to make as well, and Freeman and Lichtfield let them make their arguments (and mostly keep their integrity), while trying to entice Greta to quintuple her donation. The debate/dance is fascinating and full of texture; I'm still thinking about it days later.

Aidem, Litchfield
Photo: Kent Meister

In the small space of the handsome set (designed by Craig Napoliello), Greta feels free to pace and wander. Tanner, a guest in Greta's house and in the less-powerful position, never leaves their chair. Greta sometimes feels like a predator stalking her prey, though she would never see herself that way. Greta wants to get her way, and also to be approved, liked, and sympathized with.  (In a funny/horrible moment, Greta asks nonbinary, nonwealthy, working-for-a-living Tanner if they have any idea how it feels to be marginalized.) Aidem manages to make Greta a genuinely sympathetic and even likeable character while never diminishing her vivid faults. It's a great performance.

As Tanner, Litchfield has perfected the meaningful squirm and the eloquent gesture. She gives an amazingly physical performance, brilliantly done. We can feel who Tanner is.

(It's worth taking a moment to point out that this fabulous female character and equally fabulous nonbinary character were written by a male playwright. Good writers can indeed write across gender, race, age, etc. In fact, it's what good writing is.)

If this show were on Broadway, both performers would be nominated for Tonys--and it would cost hundreds of dollars to see them. But at the Wild Project, they can be seen in an intimate space for a reasonable ticket price. It's excellent theatre; it's a bargain.

Wendy Caster