The Blue Room

When David Hare's The Blue Room with Nicole Kidman was on Broadway in 1998, it seemed a thin and cliched story about sexual encounters. The Bridge Production Group at The WhiteBox Art Gallery tries to reinvent this loose adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen (also a 1950s French movie, La Ronde) by performing it a small, basement art gallery, where costumes hang in the universal restroom and on a rack within the audience's view. The action unfolds inches from the audience making the piece more voyeuristic and disquieting. 

The 10 vignettes tell a circular story that attempts to show how class and power impact sexual encounters - we have a prostitute and her client; an au pair with the boss's son, the politician with his young paramour. Most of the tales focus on the unequal power between men and women - especially rich, influential men and their lovers. But the stories fall into shallow cliches - and the play's discussion about sex never amounts to more than a casual conversation. It's too bad Hare's adaptation resisted  including a few more strong women - it might have created a more vivid, original play.

The Bridge Production Group's Artistic Director Max Hunter directs Christina Toth (Annalisa in "Orange is the New Black") and himself in a multitude of hook-up scenarios. While both ably communicate a variety of characters, only Toth finds the visceral core of each. Hunter shows disdain, swagger and callousness but he never touches the vulnerability that Toth discovers, especially in the more damaged individuals.

Costumes challenge the smoothness of the production since, like the original, changes are mostly done in front of the audience. Sometimes the dresses fall off Toth or something is turned around with the tag showing. Rather than offering insight into the individuals portrayed, such moments just seem sloppy (costume design by Nicolle Allen). Bulky, too, are set changes - as a folding couch is made into a bed or a coffee table is added. The slight set design could be pared down even more.

The projection of countdowns and imagery aids the storytelling - with the light, sound and movement amplifying the sudden ending of scenes and relationships (lighting and projection design by Cheyenne Sykes). Like the Broadway version neon often lights the set adding a seediness to the encounters. A sign detailing the time each tryst takes makes the audience laugh, but becomes monotonous after the fourth or fifth pairing.

Max Hunter and Christina Toth.
Photo credit: Callum Adam

The Blue Room plays at The WhiteBox Art Gallery (329 Broome Street between Bowery and Chrystie Streets) until July 29. Shows are Wednesday and Thursday at 7 p.m.; Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. and Saturday, July 21 and 28 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $30 at www.bridgeproductiongroup.org.

The performance is approximately 90 minutes.

Skylight

photo: Sara Krulwich

Every theater season has a "snob hit," according to William Goldman's classic 1969 insider's guide to Broadway, The Season. It's a play--usually British--that cultured New Yorkers flock to en masse, out of a sense of obligation. They don't want to see it, per se, but feel they have to, in order to preserve their cred as serious art lovers. This season's snob hit is almost certainly the revival of David Hare's 1995 play Skylight, currently at the John Golden Theatre after a successful, sold out, screened in movie theaters worldwide run in London. Directed by the supposed wunderkind Stephen Daldry and starring heavy hitters Bill Nighy and Carey Mulligan, it's attracting droves of the well-heeled denizens of the Upper West Side and Park Slope, who dutifully applaud, laugh when appropriate, nod appreciatively, and feel grateful that they managed to wrangle up a ticket.

Skylight is a talky, boring play meant to comment on the perilous class divide in post-Thatcherite England. However, it really boils down to nothing more than a charismatic older man talking his way into a fragile young woman's knickers. Tale as old as time, with or without the pretense of liberal politics to make it seem more palatable. Tom Sergeant (Nighy), a successful restaurateur, shagged his former employee, Kyra Hollis (Mulligan), for six years while she lived with him and his now-deceased wife as a de facto family member. When Mrs. Sergeant discovered the affair, Kyra fled to North London, to begin a self-prescribed penance as a teacher in a slum school. When Tom turns up round her flat after three years of silence, it's not long before they are back in the roles they once inhabited, and back in bed.

And did I mention they talk? And talk. And talk. And talkkkkkkkk. About everything. Which amounts to nothing.