Russian Transport

Sarah Steele, Janeane Garofalo
Photo: Monique Carboni

At the beginning of Erika Sheffer's intriguing new play Russian Transport, we meet a Russian family who has been living in Brooklyn since the older child, now 18 or so, was a baby. The parents have retained many Russian beliefs and values; the children are totally American. The mother (Janeane Garofalo) is gruff and domineering, even mean, but also quite funny at times. The father (Daniel Oreskes) is gentler, but he is distracted by money problems. The son, Alex (the excellent Raviv Ullman), is impatient, particularly with his sister, Mira, telling her flat-out that he thinks she is ugly. (Mira is played by Sarah Steele, who also plays a handful of other young women; she does an impressive job with all of them.)

In some ways, this could be the beginning of a perverse sitcom, but Sheffer has something a lot more serious in mind. What is the price of loyalty? How far would you go for a family member? Where do you draw the line? These are not sitcom questions.

The plot takes off when the mother's brother, the attractive, sexy, and somewhat menacing Boris, comes for a vist. He is supportive of Mira's desire to go to Florence (her mother is not); he offers Alex (suspiciously) high-paying work. His machinations cause rifts between family members.

The play could fall apart without a good Boris; luckily, Morgan Spector is completely convincing in his ability to charm, manipulate, and frighten people, sometimes switching modes on a dime. (Spector has everything that Chris Rock lacked in The Motherfucker With the Hat. With Spector in Rock's role, the show would have been significantly better.)

Sheffer's writing can be quite funny, and her characters are believable. The plot is compelling, and the story moves right along. I think, however, that the play would be better balanced if a glimmer of affection was shown between the two teenagers and if the mother displayed a bit of real softness.

Scott Elliott's direction could do more to support Sheffer's work. Due to accents and timing, the exposition can be difficult to follow. More importantly, perhaps the most significant scene in the show is a mess. A moment that the audience should feel as a slap in the face instead leads to "Huh, wait a second, does that mean that . . .?" The dialogue is there; the staging gets in the way.

Overall, Russian Transport is quite good. I'm looking forward to seeing more of Sheffer's work.

(press ticket; sixth row, audience right-ish)

Petula Clark at Feinstein's

Let's play a word-association game. I say, "Petula Clark." 

And you say?

My guess is that you say--no, sing--"Downtown." Or perhaps, "Don't Sleep in the Subway, Darling." On the other hand, perhaps you get all Norma Desmond and say or sing, "Just One Look." Or something from Blood Brothers. Whatever your frame of reference, the happier you are to think of Petula Clark, the more you should check her out at Feinstein's at the Regency this week.

Clark's set wanders through her past, from pop to the West End, making sure to hit all the best-known moments. Her voice is pretty much shot, but she uses it judiciously, interspersing stories and even poems to give it a rest from singing, saving the big notes for songs that demand them. (If you can't do Norma Desmond big, why do her at all?) She's no Barbara Cook or Marilyn Maye (who is?), but she's extremely likeable, and while her songs aren't all well-sung or well-interpreted, they are all heart-felt.

While it was clear that dyed-in-the-wool Clark fans were in ecstasy throughout the set, for me it had definite ups and downs. The less successful pieces included "Someone to Watch Over Me," "The Man I Love," and "Miss Otis Regrets," all of which suffered from her reduced vocal range bumping into her not-super-duper interpretative skills. And, unfortunately, although Clark works hard to include the entire audience, her band has electric guitars and bass, and drums, and if you sit extreme audience right, it can be impossible to hear her when they start rocking.

There were quite successful moments as well, however.  The highlight in terms of singing was Clark's lovely, simple, in-French version of "La Vie En Rose," accompanied by Clark herself on piano. And the highlight in terms of overall experience was "Downtown." (The part of me that is still 8 years old was thrilled to pieces to be seeing Petula Clark in person! Singing "Downtown"! And asking us to sing along!) And the highlight in terms of Clark's wry humor was her updating of "Downtown" to reflect the loss of the cool clubs and the invasion of the chain stores.

If you're a Petula Clark fan, you'll have a great time.

(press ticket, extreme audience right)

Wit

Wit is a difficult play. The lead character isn’t particularly likeable on the page, but the audience can’t merely feel sorry for her. The metaphors and deconstructions of 17^th Century poetry are a tricky set up that can take you to places both sentimental and pretentious, simultaneously. The Brecht meets cancer formula flips you two birds and dares you to care.

Playwright, Margaret Edson, litters the page with landmines; but the well-navigated path can lead to a thrilling experience that moves you and makes you think.

I first saw a production at the San Jose Repertory Theatre a few years ago. It was powerful, devastating, personally deconstructing.

The experience of the Lynne Meadow-directed production at Manhattan Theatre Club is too many landmines and the dreaded sandtrap—it’s just plain boring. Cynthia Nixon seemed uncomfortable in the lead role and was all too aware that her character is cold, impersonal, and unpleasant. She works hard to please, begs us to like her, but descends pretty quickly into over-articulated shrieking. She performs. She plays angry, hostile, mean, desperate, and lonely—all with an apologetic tone—even before the character has come to realize she has anything to apologize for. She is actually best (and, yes, she is devastating) in the moments when she has no lines to speak, no sins to confess, and just focuses on the war raging inside her.

I often, admittedly cynically, wonder when so many secondary characters are played ineffectively if they’ve been cast with the intent of helping the star shine. Otherwise, it’s just bad direction. The supporting cast here is mostly mediocre. Suzanne Bertish, however, shines brighter in five minutes on stage than all the lights of Broadway. Her final scene in the play is sublime, gut-twisting, perfection.

If you didn’t see Kathleen Chalfant or Judith Light in the original, you probably owe it to yourself to see the play. While this production doesn’t shine the best light on Wit, there is enough to reflect, to see that none of us can fully deconstruct death, no matter how you punctuate it.

3 Shows With a Black Thread

I didn’t go looking for shows about people of color, didn’t have an agenda in grouping these three together. I simply happened to see them about the same time and, since all had been running a while, decided to review them at once.

Stick Fly

The message in Stick Fly is pretty simple—rich people can be assholes regardless of race; and just because George and Weezie moved on up doesn’t mean they brought anybody else along for the ride— the have nots have been caste aside, left behind, and without a place at the table. The only way into the dining room is through the bedroom. It suggests race has evolved to a white versus black conversation, but economic disparity gets stuck in your throat.

It is a more intriguing idea than it is a play, mostly because nothing very surprising happens. Dialogue is a lot less riveting when you are able to see it coming, pick a side, and write a rebuttal in your head. The best to be said about Lydia R. Diamond’s play is that it exists. She’s done little more than take the Huxtables on vacation and make them hateful. The plot is more edgy but not much more insightful than a sitcom episode. Kenny Leon doesn’t add much as far as mining between the lines for drama.

The star of the show is David Gallo, the set designer. He has created a world that tells you both who and where these people are. Actually, he tells you more about the fictional inhabitants than those cast to inhabit the fiction.

Ruben Santiago-Hudson as the family patriarch who married into money, carried the burden of head-of-household while feeling a guest who could be disinvited at any moment, plays the role as little more than a philandering asshole. Mikhi Phifer, trying to fill his father’s boxer shorts, is a philandering asshole. Dule Hill, breaking the mold, is a philosophizing asshole. The female cast really mixes it up. Tracie Thoms, poor by divorce and discarded by a rich and noteable father, is shriekingly annoying. Rosie Benton, engaging in helping the poor as emotional porn and cleansing conscience through do-gooding, is annoying at inside-voice decibles. Condola Rashad (the daughter of real-life Mrs. Huxtable), is broodingly annoying for three quarters of the play, then unloads for the pivotal twist that comes a couple of hours too late in the evening. She has the chops, delivers the goods, and it might have made for a stronger play had the maid played a bigger role.

Kudos to Alicia Keys for producing. Putting more African American actors to work and putting more African American characters at the center of that work makes theatre better—moving on up to the front of the stage is only a good thing for all of us, on both sides of the proscenium. I just wish there was a stronger play waiting once we all got there.

The Road to Mecca

Photo by Walter McBride

Athol Fugard gives us an opposite view of the character of color in the apartheid-era play, The Road to Mecca—none make the stage and barely make mention. The story is actually only set in the time of apartheid, it isn’t really about that. It isn’t really about much at all. There may be something in there, but it is too convoluted to care.

There isn’t much story, and there is even less drama. It was a thrill to see Rosemary Harris on stage; but neither the role nor the performance is worthy of her legend. Carla Gugino delivers some spark but not much fire. Jim Dale arrives late and leaves early and neither much matter—not his fault. The play sets him up to be the desperately-needed crux of the story, but this lame drama needs a crutch before it is ready for a crux.

The worst I can say about this play is that it exists. It is just boring. Who cares? There’s ten minutes of drama draped in an evening of blather. I am no better for having met these people. No closer to Mecca having traveled their Road. If you need to have your life shortened by a couple of hours, this is the euthanasia for you.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Yes, the show has closed for this winter, but it will be back at the end of the year; and it is never too early to make it a priority. I make it a point to see Alvin Ailey at City Center every year. A year without Revelations is no revelation. This year, I caught it twice.

The first time was less than perfect. The seats were far right, and while I like to move around from year to year for perspective, something gets lost at the extremes. My favorite way to see the show is in the first couple of rows. The tickets are $25, the view is thrilling, the intimacy is eye-opening because you can see the incredible work, talent, and control on an individual basis. You trade shape and scale for individual perfection. That perfection is especially clear when watching the solo number, I Wanna Be Ready, which was performed in rotation this year by two guest artists, Clifton Brown and Matthew Rushing, both long-standing, stand-out members of the company. They couldn’t be more different (two master classes, Brown’s in precision and Rushing’s in personality). If these two dancers are not on your list of not-to-be-missed performers, add them, remember them, and see them.

You can never go wrong with an all-Ailey evening. Someone else bought my ticket on the first visit, so it wasn’t all-Ailey and what could go wrong did. The first number, some assault choreographed by Geoffrey Holder, was barely bearable. It was followed by something forgettable, choreographed by Judith Jamison. Even Revelations was diminished by some ill-advised, “special” event that included members of Ailey II and some children from Ailey Elementary or some such. It was too many people adding little. I’m not a big fan of other people’s children to begin with and certainly wouldn’t knowingly attend their annual recital.

I couldn’t let that be my experience for the year, so I returned, this time sitting in the balcony. It couldn’t have been a more different experience. The evening started with Anointed, choreographed by Christopher L. Huggins. What a thrilling beginning. The final movement of the dance is as emotional and moving as anything I have ever seen. The second, a hip-hop number, Home, choreographed by Rennie Harris and inspired by photos and essays submitted for the Fight HIV Your Way campaign was excellent, although I wish I hadn’t known in advance about the supposed subject matter. I expected more of a connection. It turned out to be a lovely hip-hop number. I just missed the inspiration. Finally, Revelations renewed my faith. Fix Me Jesus was absolute perfection.

Revelations is a quintessentially African American story, but it’s emotions and arc and connection are universal and for me, simply essential.

Menders

Raushanah Simmons,
Ingrid Nordstrom
  Photo: Justin Hoche

Something there is that doesn't love a wall. So begins Robert Frost's well-loved poem "Mending Wall," and so also begins Erin Browne's flawed but compelling new play, Menders, currently being presented by the fabulous Flux Theatre Ensemble. Menders takes place in a future world where a giant wall separates safety and "us" from all that is ugly, wrong, and "them." At least that's what Corey and Ames have been brought up to believe.

Corey and Ames are trainee wall menders. Both are just recently out of school. Ames is nervous, but Corey is confident, gung-ho, and absolutely certain that their side of the wall is the right side. Their trainer is the burnt-out and disappointed Drew, who passes the time telling Corey and Ames stories that seem magical to the young trainees. Their world has been so circumscribed that the tale of a winged woman doesn't seem all that much more exotic than a tale of two women falling in love.

But somewhere along the way, Corey is jailed. We--and she--never find out what her crime is, and the play occurs in flashback as she tells the audience--her jury--everything that has happened since she first became a mender.

Playwright Browne cares about the world. She cares about politics and feminism and self-expression and governmental repression. She sees vividly how today's world could turn into tomorrow's dystopia. In an interview with blogger Zach Calhoon, Browne explains that the play grew out of a "melange" of ideas and that "Robert Frost's idyllic and concrete world of everyday things guided all of those ideas into the first draft of Menders." However, her play goes well past Frost's poem--in fact, the frequent use of Frost's words is distracting and misleading. The people on the two sides of Frost's poem are civil neighbors; they are not "us" and "them." Frost's poem is small and neat; Browne's play is large and messy (messy isn't a criticism here--the wealth of ideas is one of the play's greatest strengths). However, this part of the poem does resonate in the play: "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know/What I was walling in or walling out." Corey doesn't mean to ask that question, but she becomes unable not to.

Browne's play doesn't totally work at a plot and detail level. Corey is perhaps a bit too gung-ho. The stories that Drew tells don't offer enough to justify the time they are given. The characters' growth and changing relationships sometimes seem mistimed. What's actually on each side of the wall is not as clear as it might be. But the play's energy, ideas, and big heart more than make up for its weaknesses. 

Heather Cohn's direction is imaginative and clear and well-paced. Asa Wember's sound design is quietly unsettling, providing just the right emotional effect. Some of Trevor James Martin's video projections work better than others. In some cases, they come across as visual noise; in others, they are just right; and in a few, they are (appropriately) chilling.

As always with Flux productions, the cast is excellent. Sol Marina Crespo handles Corey's development and the play's fractured chronology very well. Matt Archambault as Drew provides exactly the right mix of smooth charm, exhaustion, and manipulativeness. Isaiah Tanenbaum does a lovely job depicting Ames' awakening. And Raushanah Simmons and Ingrid Nordstrom are wonderful as wooer and wooee, though Simmons may be a little too beautiful for the part--it's hard to understand why anyone would say no to her.

Overall, Menders is well worth seeing. 

(press ticket; third row on the aisle)

The Mountaintop

Katori Hall's The Mountaintop, which was a surprise hit in London and which has been running on Broadway since the autumn, hasn't really fallen off my radar since it began previews. The subject interests me, sure, but so too do the performers, both of whom I admire and have not seen perform live before. So when the opportunity to see the show, which is closing tomorrow, arose late last week, I took it. I didn't much like the play, but I'm still glad I saw it.

Jackson and Bassett didn't disappoint--they are both fine actors, and, alone together on the stage for 90 minutes, they work hard, command attention, and look exceptionally fabulous in the process. While I am not entirely sure they meshed as well as they might have, I think that inevitably spoke to flaws in the writing itself, and not so much to their interpretations of the characters. Jackson plays Martin Luther King, Jr., who has just returned to the Lorraine Motel after his "Mountaintop" speech--the last one he gives before being assassinated, and the one which seems to foreshadow his own death. He is tired, has a hacking cough and a lot of work to do, it's pouring rain outside, and Coretta forgot to pack his toothbrush. While awaiting the return of his colleague, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, with a pack of much-craved Pall Malls, he takes an offstage leak, paces, checks his room for bugs, and nearly jumps out of his skin every time the thunder claps. Soon, he calls down to room service for a pot of coffee, which is delivered by Angela Bassett's character, Camae, a new hotel maid with a foul mouth, irresistible good looks, and way more knowledge about the Civil Rights movement and King's private life than makes much sense. She Is Not Who She Seems, which is a major plot device here, and one that kind of doesn't work at all.

That said, I think some of my negative reaction to the play is what some might argue gives it strength: I am not one who is terribly interested in, comforted by, or intrigued by the teeny trivialities of great figures. We are all flawed, so why should it be such a big deal to learn that our heroes are, too? Thus, the fact that King, at least as depicted by Hall, smoked too much, cheated on his wife, occasionally needed to pee, and had smelly feet doesn't really grab me. On the other hand, I understand the desire to humanize King, as well as to be reassured that he felt no pain at his death and that he has been embraced in Heaven. And whether you care or not about the smelly feet, Jackson's take on King is graceful, understated, and sharp.

Bassett's character is in many ways even more of an uphill battle than Jackson's. We know who King was as a public figure, which I am sure has its own challenges for the actor. But we do not know Camae--she is fictional, and her presence propels the plot forward. I'm still not sure of exactly who she is--the play is clearly more interested in having her play off King than it is in filling its audience in on the finer details of her character. Bassett does well with the part, but then again, if she's filled in the blanks for herself about the character, it's not terribly clear during the play. For all her joking, cursing, flirting, and admonishing, she's sort of a cipher.

I was also disappointed about the show's lack of stance. On anything. Is this play about religion and the divine? Is it about the intricacies of black politics and the Civil Rights movement through the 1960s? Is it about King's legacy? Is it about his private life and his flaws? The show throws a lot of stuff at the audience, who murmers in recognition at all the names, incidents, and references that get flung about. But ultimately the play teaches nothing, and doesn't encourage spectators to ponder anything new.

There were some high points, however. The final sequence, in which the entire set spins up to reveal a swirling black hole of projected images, is pretty damned cool, as is the lightening-fast monologue Camae delivers during it. And a sequence in which Camae dons King's suitjacket and imitates his public persona is hilarious. I imagine The Mountaintop will make the rounds after it closes on Broadway; I would hope Hall revisits it to address at least some of its weaknesses.