Lemon Sky

As I traveled to the Clurman Theatre to see the Keen Company's revival of Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky, I took a mental tour through other Wilson plays I've seen: Hot L Baltimore, Balm in Gilead, Fifth of July, The Rimers of Eldritch, Talley's Folly, Book of Days. And it struck me just how strong a playwright Wilson is, how compassionate and insightful. I was delighted to be on my way to a Wilson play I had never seen before.

Keith Nobbs, Kevin Kilner
Photo: Richard Termine

Unfortunately, I found Lemon Sky to be weak and flat. The autobiographical tale of the six months that Wilson lived with his father when he was 17, it relies far too much on telling and far too little on showing. Wilson's stand-in, Alan, narrates the story in great swaths of not-that-interesting monologue. The other characters occasionally address the audience as well, mostly in asides. Sometimes two characters address the audience together, as though they are reminiscing to us.

This structure is not the problem per se. Many compelling plays use a combination of addressing the audience and scenes, but Lemon Sky is (1) not compelling and (2) so short of interactions that Alan takes time to assure us, "There'll be a scene. Those who are confused will say thank God, something to watch, maybe everyone will stop flying around." But the show isn't confusing; it's boring. My main thought during intermission was, "I wonder if this ever turns into a play." (It doesn't.)

(possible spoilers below)

Another problem with Lemon Sky is the plot, such as it is. Is anyone surprised that Alan is probably gay? Is anyone surprised that his father probably made a pass at one of the teenage girls to whom he and his wife are foster parents? Does it matter that the other girl dies in a car accident? Is anyone surprised that the father turns out not to be charming or loving?

Most importantly: Does anyone care about the characters? I certainly didn't.

This is not all Wilson's fault. Jonathan Silverstein's direction is lackluster, and the performers are mostly ineffectual. Keith Nobbs as Alan lacks the charm and/or intensity to carry the audience through his travails. Kevin Kilner as the father has dynamic moments but his performance is ultimately one note. Kellie Overbey as the father's second wife barely registers. Amie Tedesco and Alyssa May Gold bring little to the table as the teen foster children. Zachary Mackiewicz as the younger of Alan's step-brothers is more interested in the audience than the play; he actually stared a few times at a man in the first row. Only Logan Riley Bruner as the older of Alan's step-brothers comes across as a three-dimensional person worth caring about.

(Press ticket, 2nd row on the aisle)

A Career in the Theatre: A Profile of Tom Dudzick

Tom Dudzick may be the most successful playwright whose work you've never seen. His first play, Greetings, opened off-Broadway in 1994 during a blizzard. Even though Clive Barnes called the play, "a comic jewel," the blizzard won. The play has become a Christmas staple in regional theatres, and his subsequent plays (including the Over the Tavern triology, Hail Mary, and Don't Talk to the Actors) have had long and frequent runs across the country. Dudzick went global in 2009 when Over the Tavern was adaped for a production in Ireland (called Over the Pub). His backstage comedy Don't Talk to the Actors is currently running in Bucharest, Romania. Many of his plays are set in his hometown of Buffalo, New York and feature characters inspired by relatives or locals from his youth. His latest work, Miracle on South Division Street, has been mounted in readings and a production in upstate New York. It could be your next opportunity to discover Tom Dudzick, who is hoping for an off-Broadway production of that play in the near future.

Seeing the sublimely hysterical production of King of the Moon at the Majestic Theater in West Springfield, Massachusetts, I became an instant fan. So, when the Showshowdown gan started talking about people to watch, I thought of Tom and took the opportunity to ask him a few questions, so you could be introduced to the man in advance of being introduced to his work. 

RS: What has been the difference for you between pursuing a career in the theatre and really making a living in the theatre? 

TD: The pursuit of a career in the theatre was filled with angst, worry, sweat, non-stop writing, meditation with creative visualization and the constant striving to “make it!” Don’t get me wrong, I loved the entire trip. Now that I’ve “made it,” I’m more relaxed and I can channel most of my creative energies into just the writing, because I’ve now made the connections, I have a network of producers who will read what I send them. So much energy in the beginning went into making it over that hump.

The fact that I’m a success with the regional theatres tells me something about myself – these are my people! I think I will have a play in New York (and it will probably be “Miracle on South Division Street”) but the people in that play, and all my plays, are so middle-America. Just regular uncomplicated people trying to make a living and eke out some happiness. And it’s so exciting when I stop and think that, on any given day, one of my plays is going on somewhere in the country. It’s a real kick for me. 

When did the transition start to happen for you, and how did it change your approach to writing? 

The transition from struggling to making it started with “Greetings!” The right person showed up at the right reading (a sit-down reading of “Greetings! with open scripts”) and said, “I’d like to produce your play at my theatre.” That was Greg Houston at the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey. That led to off-Broadway. And that started the whole ball rolling. I don’t know that it changed my approach to writing. But it gave me confidence and encouragement to continue. Back then I was still trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted to say. Which I’m still doing, come to think of it. 

What is your theatrical point of view, and how has it changed over time? 

My theatrical point of view is – tell a compelling story, clearly. It’s really that simple. Make sure the audience knows quickly who they should care about, what are the stakes, who wants what and why, and who doesn’t want him to have it, and what happens if he doesn’t get it. And make sure the hero’s quest is “playworthy,” as they say. It should be worth the trouble of getting all these people up on stage to tell the story, worth an audience paying $45 to come see it. How has it changed over time? It hasn’t. That will always be my rule – get their attention quickly and be clear. 

What are the influences that have shaped your point of view most? 

Watching TV since I was old enough to sit in front of it influenced me. Watching old movies and then eventually seeing plays. Then reading lots and lots of plays. Writing plays coincided with me being in plays – because I wrote plays to appear in. So I became very mindful of what makes people laugh, because I was experiencing it directly. That “being mindful” part is very important. I paid attention and used what worked. Then I just fell into a natural niche. I started emulating the playwrights who impressed and entertained me. Plus I read a million “how to write a play” books, which I still get out and refer to each time I start a new project. 

Your plays are often about family, faith, and mysticism. Is that coincidental? Just common context? Or intentional? If intentional, what's the larger message? 

My plays are about family because it’s what I know best. I can write about it with some authority. And the mysticism you mention – that’s another biggie with me. I love the idea that there is more to life than what we experience with our five senses. And the stage is a fun, exciting place to develop that idea. I can make the “magic” happen in real time, right before our eyes. Everyone loves to spook people out by telling them a ghost story. It’s the same kind of thing with me and the plays. Do I have a larger message? I guess that message would be, “I think there is more to life than what we’ve been led to believe, and I offer you this two-hour glimpse of how I see things. Do with it what you will.” 

What are the theatrical trends that drive you crazy? 

Things within the art form itself don’t really drive me crazy. It’s the show “business” that does it. The idea that we must have a STAR in the play or the audience won’t come, is an example. I don’t see that one going away soon, I’m afraid. Theatrical trends? I used to dislike this trend of 90 minute plays with no intermission. Because it was different. Now I’m writing 90 minute plays with no intermission. Because it still works. I don’t know how the theatres put up with it, though. Aren’t they losing a lot of candy and booze sales during intermission? 

What is your next project? Where could people see your work next? 

My next play is called “Miracle on South Division Street” and I’m hoping for an off-Broadway production soon. It’s a comedy based on a local legend in my old neighborhood in Buffalo. When I was a kid there was this barber who claimed that the Blessed Mother appeared to him. He built a shrine and had a life-size statue of Mary put inside and the whole thing stood next to his barber shop. It was a mini-Lourdes, except the Catholic Church never sanctioned the “miracle.” But the ironic thing is, my old neighborhood is pretty much in ruins now. The church has been torn down. The barber shop is gone – but the shrine is still there! The denizens of the neighborhood keep it in repair. And that’s what my play is about, this family who holds on to this old family “miracle” legend. 

You've had works commissioned. How is the process/approach different for you when you are writing a commissioned piece versus an idea of your own? 

A commission is lovely and extremely encouraging. Someone is paying you to write a play. But with it comes the pressure of having to perform. There’s the time pressure, there’s the idea that it had better be as good as they expect. But I’d never turn one down because of that. “Yes” is always the more interesting answer. 

You are possibly the most disciplined writer I have ever met. Can you talk a little about the balance of discipline, talent, luck, and whatever else you think is key to creating a career in the theatre? 

If I did 100 push-ups every morning, then I would accept the “disciplined” compliment. But as far as writing goes it doesn’t apply because I love to write. I don’t have to force myself into a schedule or any of that. I just wake up in the morning and I want to do it. So I’m very fortunate in that way. Now, you asked about discipline, talent and luck. I don’t believe in luck, so we can cross that one out. To me luck implies “random-ness,” and I don’t believe the Universe does anything in a random fashion. But that’s another discussion. For me, discipline comes into play when I market my work. Because it’s not as much fun as writing. Compiling lists of theatres, submitting, updating, cross-checking, keeping in touch with Artistic Directors, all that good stuff. What motivates me there is common sense, i.e. theatres aren’t going to come to me; I have to reach out to them.

If I Had A Time Machine ..

.. I'd probably be fired from my day job because I'd constantly be seeing shows that were before my time. Whoops, I guess that's not really an answer, though.

Oddly enough, I think one of the first shows I'd see would be CATS, mostly because I've never understood the fascination with it. I just don't get it, and I'd like to.

Actually, I'd love to see the original cast of Phantom of the Opera. It was the first show I ever saw, when I was eight. I don't know who the leads were, but I do know that I adore the original cast album, and I'd love to see it in all its original glory.

I wish I had seen Spring Awakening. My sister and my best friend, two people whose theater opinion I trust very much, each saw it multiple times and loved it. I actually met Jonathan Groff outside the revival of Promises, Promises (about halfway through his "Glee" run). He was so, so nice, and so willing to chat; I wish I had seen the show so I would have had a little more to talk about with him. There are tons of classic shows I wish I could have seen, that were just around before my time or before I was really into theater. I'd love to see A Chorus Line or The Producers. Any incarnation of HAIR, since I missed it again this summer. Every five minutes I think of another show to add to the list!

Shows I Wish I Could See? Continuing the Conversation.

I never understand the fascination with Ethel Mermen. Her brassy voice on recordings never really impresses me and, yet, she is one of Broadway's most treasured icons(I know. I know. It's heresy, right?). So I'd like to see anything with her in it, but especially Gypsy since she, herself, considered it her best performance. I'd also love to see Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! She's another actress that never appealed to me. I would love to explore the allure of these two more and I can't think of a better way than to revisit those shows.

I love the story of Peter Pan so imagine the fun of seeing a triple feature of Mary Martin, Sandy Duncan and Cathy Rigby in the title role. I'd start with the 1954 original version, see Sandy from 1979 and then watch one of the 90s versions with Cathy Rigby.

Follies

Add Follies to my list of shows that I wish I'd seen in their original productions.

Mind you, I very much enjoyed the revival, which is currently running at the enormous Marquis theater. It made me realize why, exactly, so many people rave about Follies, and flock to multiple revivals of it. I've never seen a production of the show, you see--I have a much closer relationship with Sweeney Todd and with Company. But now, having seen Follies, I totally get it: this is one hell of an important, layered, well-constructed, compelling musical.

It is also possibly, in some respects, an unworkable one, especially nowadays, and that is where this production suffers. How to contrast a dilapidated, sad, musty present with a glorious, dazzling, jaw-dropping past, without breaking the bank on scenery, costumes, and a cast of thousands? The original production suffered under the weight of its own expenses; this one doesn't even try on that front, and it's all too clear: the set never stops looking cheap, even when it's clearly trying to dazzle. That said, the cast is good to excellent. (Although Elaine Paige, saddled with "I'm Still Here"--perhaps the most anticipated song in the show--chokes the number out most unsatisfyingly. I was disappointed, but then again, oddly, still somehow moved.) While I did not see the DC production, the four central cast-members seem to have found their stride, and then some--Peters was in fine voice and seems to have found the weight of overwhelming defeat and sorrow that embodies her character; Ron Raines was appropriately imposing and flawed; and Jane Maxwell and Danny Burstein were, to me, revelations. Their younger counterparts, all, were good, too.

Yet the staging was occasionally notably weird--Sandra, with whom I saw the show, and who will surely go to greater length about this in her review on this blog, was particularly bothered by the prevalence of what she called "the Zombie chorus girls"--the ghosts of the past--walking trancelike through the proceedings, waving their arms in graceful, gently swaying, ultimately tiresome arcs, like so many bored trees. And some of the numbers seemed somehow devoid of real grace--interesting, but hardly thrilling.

The aforementioned issues that I had with this production, however, in no way negate the pleasure I had in getting to know the musical itself. The score--one of the most challenging, eclectic and surprising scores, ever--gives us a neat history of the Broadway musical, and jerks back and forth between old forms and new, increasingly weird varations on them. The past, in this musical, constantly teases and competes with, and ultimately collapses into the present; the music never, not even for a second, forgets how to reflect that. In Sondheim's socre, there are direct references to the old masters who helped shape Broadway during its so-called golden age, and who helped shape Sondheim in his youth: there's a Leonard Bernstein quote here, a nod to Rodgers and Hammerstein there. Here's the entire history of American stage music; here's something completely new.

Characters sing diffuse, unformed fragments of songs that they later deliver in full as their memories flood back and overwhelm them; characters tell us how they've been for all these years in song, alternately by being heartbreakingly straightforward and by lying, even more heartbreakingly, through their teeth. I have never connected so strongly to characters who reveal themselves almost entirely through song and dance, but by the end of the show I felt not only that I had gotten to know them, but that I wanted--desperately--to know what was going to happen to them. Probably nothing all that different, or all that good, alas, but the characters became real to me nonetheless, and I was sad for them.

The structure of the musical drives home its many interrelated themes. Follies is all about death --the death of the road not traveled, the death of potential and of opportunity, the death of love and of marriage, the death of the past, the inevitable death of the present. The musical frames this with a structure modeled after entertainment forms that, by 1971 were, if not completely dead, then actively, rapidly dying: burlesque, operetta, vaudeville and, of course, the Ziegfeldian extravaganza. These forms were so enormously important once, to our country when it was younger, and they're all...just....gone.

This revival, too, strikes me as the inadvertent lament for a Broadway that has, as well, died. I know, I know, if we had a dime for every time someone announced that Broadway was dead, we'd all be as rich as Benjamin Stone. But I was struck by the fact that this musical is rooted in the past in more ways than one: it's very much an early 1970s musical in a lot of ways. Not only is it about crushing disappointment, in keeping with that downer of a decade, but it's also experimental, and hallucinogenic, and weird, and sad, and both emotionally and intellectually challenging. It's also risky as hell, and entirely original, and it was first launched at enormous expense. On Broadway. Which, nowadays, revives, revives, revives, or puts its biggest money on shows that have functional scores and that were once movies or tv shows, or...well, you get my drift: Follies is dead. Long live the Follies.

Traces versus Zarkana

There’s something in the water in Montreal. They pump out body-defying acrobatics wrapped in tongue-in-cheek excess like a virus. Despite the shared core, two Canadian exports leaped into town, and they couldn’t be more different. Traces, at the Union Square Theatre, makes Zarkana, at Radio City Music Hall, look like Cirque du So What?

Zarkana is like a bad online date. The poster is attractive, but what meets you at the door is bloated, obnoxious, and several inches short of promise. There’s a lot of heavy breathing, but I just sat there wishing they’d finish already so I could go home.

Traces is a cigarette short of a seal-the-deal first date. It is intimate, sexy, breathtaking, and sweaty. And the hotties on the poster actually showed up. There wasn’t enough body fat on the stage to cook up a 2 piece and a biscuit.

Traces isn’t an evening of never-before-seen tricks. As a matter of fact, there is very little that’s unexpected. What makes the show special is that each performer participates in every act. Many body circus acts show up for 10 minutes, flip physics the bird, and disappear into the wings. The seven artists in Traces weave in and out of the spotlight for 90 minutes, mastering multiple acrobatic styles (poles, chairs, skateboards, tumbling, and jumping) and multiple artistic styles (everyone plays the piano, several sing, and all display comedic charm).

The second, special treat of the evening is that you get to meet the people behind the tricks. They introduce themselves, give you peeks at their individual personalities, and we even get to see baby pictures. That may sound a bit saccharine, but Traces is a full-octane adult beverage. The whole affair gets a little loud occasionally, but it is completely appropriate and expected.

Finally, the show delivers on its promise. The performers execute 100% of the tricks planned. That is not to say they get it right the first time, every time; but you get to see every trick, no cheats. Zarkana, with all its gaudy excesses and endless, overproduced caterwauling, was a disappointment start to finish. At the Union Square Theater, there wasn’t a Trace of disappointment.