Man and Boy

DISCLAIMER:Man and Boy is in previews and opens officially on October 9.

One of my favorite things about attending Roundabout theater productions is that I never have any idea what the shows are about, so I go in with no expectations or prejudices. Sometimes, as with last year's production of Brief Encounter, this works well, and I end up seeing a fantastic show that hits every emotional note perfectly and leaves me wishing I could see a show every night. Other times, it means that I end up sitting through a show that I have no interest in and can't connect to, and leaves me wishing I had known what it was about so I could avoid it.

Which brings me to last night. Terence Rattigan's play should have resonated, at least a little, since the cultural environment is similar to our own; it's the story of a father and son, meeting for the first time in five years on the eve of a global financial collapse. The father, Gregor Antonescu (Frank Langella), is being hounded by the press. He seeks refuge in his son Basil's (Adam Driver) Greenwich Village apartment. Heated words are exchanged, secrets are revealed, and lives are forever changed.

The problem with this play lies not in the individual performances, but in the source material. The first act drags on and on, with no real direction or any hint of the urgency of the situation. It ends with a series of misunderstandings that might be played for laughs in a different show, but here just makes everyone uncomfortable. The repercussions of these misunderstandings are promptly forgotten in the second act, leaving the viewer wondering why they were brought up at all.

The second act is no better. Emotional bombs are dropped left and right, but the emotional climax feels unearned. By the final scene, I didn't care whether or not Basil and his father made amends. I did wonder where his girlfriend had gone, though; she disappears sometime in the first act and is never mentioned again.

The small cast does the best they can with dreary material. Frank Langella bounces between genteel world financier and kindly if clueless father so smoothly that I believed Basil's deep angst at how to deal with him. Similarly, Driver's Basil was so shaken by his father's reappearance that I wanted to give him a hug. Still, this entire story could have been told in one 90-minute act instead of two acts and over two hours. Unless the show is considerably streamlined in the three weeks between now and the official open, this is probably a show you can skip.

Our Town

Photo by Carol Rosegg

Our Town, currently playing at the Barrow Street Theater and starring Michael McKean as the Stage Manager, is a marvel of a play. Having somehow escaped high school without reading it or seeing it performed, I found this performance nothing short of fascinating.

The staging at the Barrow Street Theater is at once unique: along with a sparse stage set with only two kitchen tables and four chairs between them, the first row of seats on the left and right side of the stage are actually on the stage, in the middle of all the action. Actors and actresses not only use the chairs and people in them as props, but during certain intermediary segments of the show, audience members are discreetly slipped index cards and prompted to take part in a "Q&A" with the editor of the Grover's Corners newspaper.

The story is slow and steady, with a Stage Manager who maintains a certain sense of defensive placidity as he describes the people, places, and daily activities in this small New Hampshire town. The normality of the play captures the audience's attention so easily that it's not until the very end of the first act -- or even the beginning of the second -- that the viewer can really tell what the arc of the story is. This quaint, idealistic storyline is shattered in the third act, in a series of events that caused more than one audience member to gasp quietly. The final scene is heartwrenching; James McMenamin's portrayal of George Webb simmers so subtly throughout the first two acts that his final, agonizingly emotional scenes are breathtaking.

In The Heights

Photo by Joan Marcus

In The Heights is one of those rare shows that starts quickly and manages to keep its brisk pace throughout, without feeling rushed, or worse, lagging halfway through the second act while the cast catches its breath. The quick rhyming by Usnavi (currently played by Corbin Bleu) introduces the setting and all of the major characters before the show is even ten minutes old, yet the audience is never lost.

Rather, they are welcomed in by the community. Set in the Hispanic neighborhood of Washington Heights, around the 181st Street subway station, the show could easily become a cultural study that the audience watches but doesn't invest in. Instead, with a clever wink to such thinking, Usnavi lets the audience know that he knows what you're thinking -- "I'm up sh*t's creek, I ain't never been north of 96th Street!" Yet the audience is drawn in. The music, dancing, and complete joy that infuse the show are nothing short of infectious. In The Heights apeals to such a broad audience -- adults who can empathize with the day to day struggles, teens looking for a more relatable musical, and kids attracted by the wildly talented Corbin Bleu -- that it could easily paint its characters with broad strokes, but instead each is fully realized and wonderfully complex.

In The Heights deserves every one of its five Tony Awards. Bring your kids, bring your parents, bring the people down the street -- just make sure you see it, because no other show on Broadway captures summer in the city quite like this.