Happy Talk

I suspect that there is a good play inside Jesse Eisenberg's Happy Talk, currently  at The New Group at the Signature Center. The ideas and the situation are intriguing, and there is humor and insight in the telling. But, at least here, its good points are eclipsed by its problems.

Lorraine (Susan Sarandon) feels unmoored and lonely. Her (never seen) mother is bedridden and slowly dying in a room on the first floor. Her husband, Bill (Daniel Oreskes), barely speaks, so sunk is he in depression and multiple sclerosis. And her daughter, Jenny (Tedra Millan), has been out of touch for months. Lorraine does have a couple of things going for her: Her mother's caregiver, Ljuba (Marin Ireland), a cheerful woman from Serbia, provides Lorraine with emotional support and something resembling friendship, and Lorraine is playing Bloody Mary in South Pacific at the local Jewish Community Center. As happens in dramas of this sort, things are not quite what they seem, secrets are revealed, and people learn more about themselves and each other than they necessarily want to know.

The problem with Happy Talk is that, rather than peeling the onion to get deeper into the story and people's psyches, it switches onions a few times and even throws in an apple and an orange. In other words, one thing does not lead to another: the character revelations seem, well, out of character; the tone of the play pivots without logic; and the pay off is bizarre and unconvincing. Having seen and enjoyed Eisenberg's work before, I suspect that these problems could be solved in three ways: (1) rewrites, (2) better casting, and (3) better direction.

It must be a thrill to get a movie star like Susan Sarandon in your Off-Broadway play. Fame often brings with it free publicity and increased ticket sales, and, hey, it's Susan Sarandon! However, Sarandon is miscast; she lacks the size and personality of the sort of (white!) woman who would adore playing Bloody Mary, believe she's great in the role, and speak of herself as an "artist." The other problem is that Sarandon is pretty mediocre in the role. I have loved many of her performances in movies, but she is lost on stage, lost and uncomfortable. And her comic timing is awful. I sympathized with Eisenberg as his jokes and character bits fell flat because Sarandon simply didn't know what to do with them.

And then there's the direction of Scott Elliot. He lets Sarandon flounder. Worse, he directs three of the other four performers to eliminate subtlety and rely on either shtick or speedy yelling. Ireland eventually plays Ljuba as a complex human being, but in the beginning of the show she's a cartoon with an  embarrassingly exaggerated accent. I suspect that Ireland and Elliot are trying to show how Ljuba has to perform the role of cheerful caregiver, but the first 20 minutes or so are cringe-worthy. As the daughter, Millan barrels through her speeches, though she's lovely in her scenes with her father. Nico Santos, as a gay man "dating" Ljuba, manages to provide warmth and individuality here and there, but otherwise tips into caricature. Only Oreskes provides a wholly successful performance.

I hope that Happy Talk has a future. Its ideas about loneliness, ego, and desperation are interesting, and I suspect that their presentation could be compelling and touching. Just not here.

Wendy Caster
(sixth row, press ticket)
Show-Score: 60

The True

Is it ungrateful of me to wish that Sharr White's play, The True, presented by The New Group, had more to offer? Perhaps. After all, there is already much to like here: solid writing, smooth direction, and an amazing cast. But for all those strengths, I just didn't care.

John Pankow, Edie Falco
Photo: Monique Carboni

In all fairness, I mostly wasn't bored. I mean, look at this cast: Edie Falco. Michael McKean. John Pankow. Peter Scolari. Each and every one of them is a pleasure to watch, always. Falco, unsurprisingly, gives an excellent performance, and you can't keep your eyes off her as she talks, and talks, and talks, and talks. And curses and curses and curses.

Why is Falco's character such a gabber? Dorothea Noonan, known as Polly, is an essential component of the Democratic machine in 1970s Albany, and has been for years. She thinks she knows everything--she certainly does know a lot--and it takes many, many words for her to tell everyone around her how to live their lives, professionally and otherwise.

Noonan is a close friend and adviser to the mayor (McKean), but at the start of the play he has decided that he needs distance from her. This separation does not stop her from fighting for him behind the scenes, and she meets with the various men who will help decide whether he gets another term as mayor. (One theme of the play is how she is treated differently because she's female, but to me everyone was pretty obnoxious and she fit right in.)

Ironically enough, the most emotionally successful moment in the play is silent. (It would be a spoiler to say more.)

Some of the political machinations of The True are interesting. Some of the relationships look like they would be fruitful to explore. But as it stands, there is little reason to care about these characters, and the play ends up being about ploys rather than people.

Wendy Caster
(press ticket, row E)
Show-Score: 80

Peace for Mary Frances

Lily Thorne treads familiar ground in her new play, Peace for Mary Frances. Estranged members of a family gather due to the death of a parent. Old grudges are revisited, old wounds are reopened, and, well, you know. In this case, however, instead of assembling after the death (e.g., as in August, Osage County, Crimes of the Heart, and many more) they come to care for Mary Frances while she's still alive. Mary Frances, tired and in pain, is ready to die; she has decided to refuse further treatment. The family accept her decision, but they don't accept much of anything else.

Johanna Day, J. Smith-Cameron, Heather Burns 
Photo: Monique Carboni

One daughter, Fanny--the official fuck-up and ex-heroin user--has been living with Mary Frances but supposedly not taking good care of her. The other daughter, Alice--the quirky, angry one, who works as an astrologist--is jealous of the Fanny's relationship with their mother and neither trusts nor likes Fanny in general. The son, Eddie, who charges Mary Frances for helping with her paperwork, is largely oblivious. Alice's adult daughters are there too: one, a mother, is loving and able to push herself to do uncomfortable care tasks; the other, a famous actress, spends more time crying than helping.

Jerry Springer: The Opera

[spoilers throughout]

Yes, curse words sung operatically by incredibly talented people are startlingly funny. And arguments about who's cheating on who, complete with hair-pulling, are also great fun presented operatically. But they have diminishing returns, and, although I completely was completely enjoying the first act of Jerry Springer: The Opera, I began to wonder if it goes anywhere.

It does: it goes to purgatory, complete with biblical characters (e.g., Satan, Adam, Eve, Jesus). And guess what? They have as many issues as the humans in Act I and behave as badly. And, yes, it's a blast.

I suspect the show wants to provide social commentary, and perhaps it did when it was first written. Now, it mostly provides entertainment--first-class, top-notch, occasionally side-splitting entertainment. And much of the music is beautiful, to boot.

Richard Thomas (music, book, and lyrics) and Stewart Lee (book and lyrics) could not ask for a better production than the one currently being presented by the New Group. John Rando directs the craziness of the show with perfect pacing and mood, and Chris Bailey's choreography is wonderfully character-specific and wonderfully wonderful.

And the cast is full of amazingly talented people who can sing magnificently, act well, and move--and who also have prodigious amounts of energy. They are Jennifer Allen, Florrie Bagel, Brandon Contreras (remarkably poised and effective subbing in two challenging roles), Sean Patrick Doyle, Brad Greer, Luke Grooms, Nathaniel Hackmann, Billy Hepfinger, Beth Kirkpatrick, Elizabeth Loyacano, Terence Mann (a convincingly glib Jerry Springer), Tiffany Mann, Jill Paice, Kim Steele, Will Swenson (a sexy, commanding Satan), and Nichole Turner.

The design components are also top-of-the-line, appropriate, and funny. Scenic design is by Derek McLane; costume design is by Sarah Laux; and lighting design by Jeff Croiter.

One of the strengths of this fabulous production is the small theater in which it is currently appearing. I would imagine that Jerry Springer: The Opera will move to Broadway and will still be marvelous. However, if you can see it in its current incarnation, do so. The show happens all around the audience, and the intimacy is one of its major charms.

Wendy Caster
(press ticket; 4th row on the aisle; shook "Jerry Springer's" hand)

Evening at the Talk House

Perhaps it wasn't fair to see Wallace Shawn's mildly compelling dystopian play Evening at the Talk House so soon after seeing Caryl Churchill's wildly compelling dystopian play Escaped Alone, but that's the way it happened and I can't change it now.

Broderick, Shawn
Photo: Monique Carboni

Shawn's characters are theater people at a once-popular club called the Talk House; they are celebrating the 10th anniversary of a play they worked on together, written by Robert (Matthew Broderick), who is now in TV. An unexpected addition is to the party is Dick (Wallace Shawn, showing considerably more vigor than the rest of the cast), a down-and-out actor who knows that his career was badly affected by Robert's dislike of his work. There are also two servers, both of whom the theater people know. And, of course, plenty of liquor.

Buried Child

Sam Shepard's Buried Child presents the American nightmare. Family is poisonous; religion is useless; ambition is pointless; nothing has been planted in over 30 years. A bizarre, rotted Norman Rockwell painting, Buried Child knows that the American Dream is an unreachable tease to most people.

Ed Harris, Paul Sparks
Photo: Monique Carboni

Shepard's play melds naturalism and symbolism, with each character's flaws--and they have many--representing something larger and deeper. Dodge, the father/grandfather, is a sick alcoholic full of anger and shame; his son, the one-legged Bradley, is an emotionally ugly man swimming against a tide of fury; his other son, the soft-headed Tilden, is almost silent, perhaps obsessing mentally about the many horrors in his past. Halie, the mother/grandmother, seems healthier than the men, even "normal," but she is a religious hypocrite, sleeping with a minister and constantly rewriting the past.

Mercury Fur

Two brothers come into a deserted room strewn with debris. Elliot is clearly the leader, smart and full of authority. Darren is the ne'er-do-well, slow-witted and stoned. They are preparing for some sort of party. Elliot starts cleaning up and badgers Darren to clean up as well. They argue. They bicker. They say "fuck" and "fucking" about a million times. Elliot in particular uses a form of English I would label as "faux-lyrical ugly." Little by little we learn that ugliness is the state of their apocalyptic world. And the party will not be a joyous occasion.

Jack DiFalco, Zane Pais
Photo: Monique Carboni 

Philip Ridley's play Mercury Fur (directed by Scott Elliott) explores the struggle for humanity in an inhumane world, and parts of it are hard-hitting and thought-provoking. It runs over 2 hours without an intermission and would be well-served by some judicious trimming, particularly in the first half hour. The dialogue is not always intelligible, which is a tremendous weakness in such a verbal work. Many stories are told, and while they are well-written, they eventually hurt the play's momentum. The cast is uniformly strong: they are Jack DiFalco, Bradley Fong, Paul Iacono, Peter Mark Kendall, Emily Cass McDonnell, Sea McHale, Zane Pais, and Tony Revolori.

Sticks and Bones

The 1950s and early 1960s masqueraded as an innocent time in the United States, and nowhere was the masquerade more vivid than on television, with its faux perfect white families with their faux problems and their faux reality. In his deeply disturbing play, Sticks and Bones, David Rabe uses one of those families--Ozzie, Harriet, David, and Ricky Nelson--as his canvas to show how America's war in Vietnam stripped the United States of its masks and revealed the confusion, hatred, and violence underneath. What raises this angry comedy to brilliance is Rabe's compassion for the faux perfect family as their willful blindness is destroyed when David, the older son, returns from Vietnam suffering from actual blindness.

Raviv Ullman, Bill Pullman, Holly Hunter,
Ben Schnetzer, and Morocco Omari
Photo: Monique Carboni

In a way, the main conflict in Sticks and Bones is between reality and denial: David can only survive with reality, and the others can only survive in denial. [spoiler] This is why the family is so eager to aid David by helping him to kill himself. It is not his pain that are seeking to end, it is their own, and they are all willing to have him die for their sins. [end of spoiler]