That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Telephone

photo: Pavel Antonov

A triptych of short, strange, highly stylized scenes, slightly unified by the theme of the limits of verbal communication, comprise this hypnotic ninety minute poem-play by Ariana Reines which The Foundry Theatre has produced with painstaking care. Every sonic and visual detail seems deeply considered and correct, working the play - which is an experience rather than a narrative - immediately into the subconscious. The first scene, and the only one of the three that could be said to be quirky, takes the first telephone conversation, between Alexander Graham Bell and Watson, as a starting point before peeling back layers of their consciousness about communication. The second scene, in which Jung's turn-of-the-century mental patient Miss St unleashes a frenzied torrent of words seemingly unfiltered from her schizophrenic mind, is overlong and exhausting to watch - it lacks the openness for interpretation of the other scenes, and once we get the point, there's not enough music in the words to hold our attention. Nonetheless its effect is essential for the success of the final scene, a spellbinding, meditative performance piece for all three actors in the cast (Matthew Dellapina, Gibson Frazier, and Birgit Huppuch) in which we wade in a sound stream of lines from intimate telephone conversations. I've rarely seen theatre that so effectively does what this scene accomplishes: it taps directly into the interior life of the audience.

Soul Samurai

Photo/Theresa Squire

Shut yo' mouth--Soul Samurai's only talkin' 'bout theater! Vampire Cowboys Theater, that is, which means there are sexy girls fighting and biting one another, not to mention exaggerated riffs on action-packed film genres: creator Qui Nguyen isn't far off when he says it's Kill Bill meets Shaft. Despite sounding like a B-movie, the cast is A-rated, as is the creative direction (puppets south of Avenue Q; stop-motion animated fruit) and overall fun. Nguyen and director Robert Ross Parker have learned from their previous shows and made mistakes into strengths, from the action-figure intro through the training montages, all the way into the wide variety of actual fight choreography. Now, baby's got bite!

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Soul Samurai

Need a shot of urban adrenaline? Soul Samurai is one long, sustained blast of the stuff. With unflagging energy and nary an ounce of dramatic flab, playwright/fight director Qui Nguyen riffs on post-apocalyptic science fiction, Fangoria horror (specifically vampire lore), blaxploitation films, karate movies, samurai/ninja subcultures, and gangsta rap bravado. His take on popular culture leans heavily towards fan-geekdom, and so of course it's also sexy, and full of noisy joy. The show has a lot of swearing, and a bit of graphic sex talk, so it's not appropriate for wee ones, but aside from that, audiences of any age should have a grand time at this supercharged piece of underworld hotness. At the HERE Arts Center through March 15. Photo by Jim Baldassare.

Read the full review.

The Book Of Lambert

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Love/Stories (or, But You Will Get Used To It)

Photo/Joan Marcus

How do you stop your post-modern comedy from spinning out of control? Get post-post-modern on it. In his latest work, thirty-something Itamar Moses evolves, David Foster Wallace-like, from a cute couple of modern love stories, into a series of self-referential plays that send up his own act while at the same time validating and enhancing it. It's exceptionally handled by the five-Bats ensemble of the Flea, actors who are young enough to grasp the circuitous and broken logic of Moses's characters, and also by Michelle Tattenbaum, who, having directed Moses before, knows well enough to let the words carry the brunt of the work. Moses's stand-in, Reader (John Russo) asks, in the climax of the fifth and final play, "...how on earth could some lame scene where two people just talk to each other get more than thimble-deep into anything that remotely resembles anything that even comes within a country mile of an approximation of the barest outline of the feelings that gave rise to the need to write this..." If this were ever really a question, it has been answered by Love/Stories. (Or, But You Will Regret Not Seeing This If You Don't Go Now.)

[Read on]

Shipwrecked! An Entertainment

photo: James Leynse

As a Victorian gentleman (charmingly played by Michael Countryman) narrates the story of his incredible shipwrecked adventures, two supporting players (Donnetta Lavinia Grays and Jeremy Bobb) rush about at whirlwind speed to play every one else in the epic story. They might step up and make whooshing sounds into an on stage microphone when the sound of a strong wind needs to be conjured, or they might hoist a bedsheet in the air to illustrate the sail of a ship. The conceit, which has the feeling of childrens' theatre, is not without purpose - the story-theatre approach speaks to the resourcefulness of human imagination, a unifying theme in the show's final half hour. Despite this and despite the efforts of the able cast, the play evaporates into thin air - there's barely any tension in the story until it's nearly over, and there isn't enough variety in the presentation to otherwise hold our interest.

33 Variations

Photo: Joan Marcus

Toward the end of his life, ill and losing his hearing, Beethoven wrote 33 variations on a seemingly innocuous waltz by music publisher Anton Diabelli, and scholar Dr. Katherine Brandt (Jane Fonda) wants to know why. A woman who finds the past much more rewarding than the present, Dr. Brandt specializes in keeping those who love her at arm’s length. Beethoven too was a difficult person, and their stories are just two of the variations on display in Moisés Kaufman’s 33 Variations.

Like Tom Stoppard’s wonderful Arcadia, 33 Variations takes place simultaneously in the past and the present. In contrast to Arcadia, however, the characters and their desires just aren’t that compelling. In all fairness, however, I saw an early preview, and it is possible that the play will be focused and trimmed—and certainly the performances will grown and deepen. How involving 33 Variations will turn out to be, time will tell.

Uncle Vanya

photo: Joan Marcus

It's no secret that good productions of Chekhov are hard to come by in New York, while bad ones are a dime a dozen. The last decade has seen everything from Derek Jacobi crashing and burning in a Roundabout-helmed Uncle Vanya to last winter's terminally overpraised, melodramatic incarnation of The Seagull. Austin Pendleton's new production of the former play, which recently opened at Classic Stage Company in the East Village, falls somewhere between the two poles; the production itself is attractive and fluid, but suffers from crucial casting errors in several key roles. Both Denis O'Hare and Maggie Gyllenhaal, as Vanya and Yelena Andreevna respectively, are far too contemporary for such a traditional staging; he runs around dispatching his trademark hysterics, while she brings her hipster inflections to her bored character's languid dialogue. Peter Sarsgaard, the weakest link of the aforementioned Seagull, fares slightly better here as the frustrated Dr. Astrov, but I believed neither his passion for Yelena nor his neutrality towards the plain Sonya (Mamie Gummer, in the first winning performance I've seen her deliver). In the end, it's a shame that Pendleton (a former CSC Vanya himself, in the late eighties) has to waste a generally winning mise-en-scene on such a disparate and defective group of actors.

Conversations on Russian Literature Plus Three More Plays

Conversations on Russian Literature is the second and more substantial half of an evening of plays by David Johnston, courtesy of the Blue Coyote Theater Group. Sitting on park benches -- not even taking a walk in the woods -- an American negotiator (Jonna McElrath) and an old Russian general (Frank Anderson) toss hot potatoes back and forth: their intellectual pursuits (hence the title), their personal histories, their own place in history, their practical and inner motivations for meeting. Skilfully, with music-perfect pacing, and with huge help from two superb performances and Gary Shrader's subtle, unobtrusive direction, the playwright reveals who these players really are and what brings them to this strange crossroads. By itself, this one-act is worth more than the price of admission.

Read the full review.

Uncle Vanya

photo: Joan Marcus

Radiant, captivating, and in full command of the stage, Maggie Gyllenhaal makes a vibrant and beguiling Yelena in the current production (at CSC) of this Chekhov classic. Unfortunately, hers is the only performance of the leading four that satisfies, a pity considering the production is judiciously paced (under Austin Pendleton's direction) and - except for a scenic design that makes sightlines problematic from the theatre's side seats - well considered. Denis O'Hare's jangly, excitable take on Vanya isn't invalid, but it finally lacks gravity: we aren't made to deeply feel the character's sense of futility or loss. Peter Sarsgaard's character choices render Astrov overly neurotic and off-putting. I rarely saw more than the machinations of technique in Mamie Gummer's performance as Sonya: she does much to convey the character's anguish - the red eyes, the tears, the catch in the voice - but I didn't believe any of it.

Astronome: A Night at the Opera

Photo/Paula Court

I actually did actually see a Richard Foreman work--Pearls for Pigs, at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in 1997. As it turns out, my 14-year-old self was correct to be confused, and there's a reason why his latest play, Astronome: A Night at the Opera, is subtitled (A Disturbing Initiation). But experiencing a play is far more important than understanding it--our mind will find a way to explain anything, given enough time--so it was with a gradually relaxing tension that I found myself enjoying this. The collaboration blends well, with John Zorn's Astronome (the Tazmanian Devil singing at a garage punk show) colliding with Foreman's visual flair, from a green-faced Tony Cliftonesque presence to the spider-webbed Hebrew and English letters on the set. If the former provides catharsis, the latter takes it on, turning the whispered mantra "Stage fright" into a way of coping with "the forces that invade human life."

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Distracted

Question: What is the line dividing a young boy’s healthy, energetic behavior from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? Answer: That’s what the mother (Cynthia Nixon) and father (Josh Stamberg) in Lisa Loomer’s entertaining new play Distracted would like to know. Jesse is an enthusiastic, recalcitrant nine-year-old with a great love of the word “fuck” and all its related permutations. His teacher complains about his behavior, but is she just too overwhelmed with her 28 other students to allow him to be himself? His psychiatrist is ready to medicate him. His father thinks he’s just a normal boy, with a normal boy’s wildness. His mother doesn’t know what to think, but she suspects everything is her fault.

Loomer takes this family’s particular situation and then pulls back to examine how it fits into today’s overmedicated world of endless media stimulation. Her approach, combining family comedy-drama with meta commentary, is largely effective; Distracted is funny and moving. The cast is solid, with standout work from Peter Benson as a series of well-meaning doctors. At the early preview I saw, the show was in very good shape, albeit some twenty minutes too long. With some trimming, and more time for the actors to grow into their roles, it might well become excellent. Distracted opens on March 4.

Chuck.Chuck.Chuck.

Photo/JJ Lind

The title of Immediate Medium's latest work, Chuck.Chuck.Chuck. is apt, for they have captured the text and the sound of William Falkner's As I Lay Dying, in which the Bundren family self-destructs while attempting to bury the matriarch of their family. JJ Lind's aesthetics are as playfully fluid as the various narrative styles of the novel, as is his cast, a bunch of stone-cold-serious jokers. If such outside-the-box theatrics (despite being performed in what is, essentially, a dirt-filled sandbox) must be called "experimental," then consider this experiment a success.

[Read on]

Ruined

Reviewed for Theatermania.

The Wendigo

The killer first line of Eric Sander's adaptation of The Wendigo establishes that it will be more streamlined than Algernon Blackwood's original 1910 short: "Our hunting party brought back no moose that year." Matthew Hancock's direction ensures that it will be smoother, for while his cast has accents, they're not exaggerated (saving us from accidental comedy). But despite all the slashing, the production isn't a killer, mainly because despite a terrific cast (led by Nick Merritt's smooth transitions from "ominous narrator" to "excited novice hunter"), the aesthetics fail to capture the mood. Based on M. L. Dogg's music and Erik Gratton's deep voice, this sort of Blair Wendigo Project, in which the evil is never really seen, might have been better suited for radio. Still, Brian Tovar's lighting does the best it can--pinpoints piercing the blackness--and for all that Nicholas Vaughan's set is a minimalist rendering of black poles as dead trees, there's plenty of lively worrying done on stage. More action would've gone a long way, but I won't penalize the Vagabond Theater Company for being true to the adaptation; in fact, I look forward to seeing what they'll do next.

[Read on]

The Wendigo

Tales like Algernon Blackwood's classic "The Wendigo" electrify our fur by pricking at our most primitive, arboreal fear: that of becoming prey. "The Wendigo"'s direct descendant, The Blair Witch Project, took a modern approach, made possible by the medium of film: it placed the audience behind the eyes of the characters. One can't do that in the theater, of course. But one might imagine staging a wordy story like "The Wendigo" by turning it inside out, snaking deep into the minds of the characters in some other way. Playwright Eric Sanders has chosen to tell the story straight, though. Essentially true to the action of the original, his 45-minute version relies heavily, as did the original story, on atmosphere. Here it's created by the trusty trappings of B-movie horrordom: insistent sound effects, spooky music, sudden and extreme lighting changes, a murky forest set - along with that modern theatrical staple, projection. But this is "The Wendigo" minus the rich texture of Blackwood's prose, and the special effects don't fully make up for that.

Read the full review.

Leah's Train

Photo/Michael Ou

As will surprise absolutely no-one, the train in Karen Hartman's play Leah's Train is a metaphor: "Time seems to stop on a train." This may clarify some of the delusional theater that follows, but it in no way justifies the tale of a mother, Hannah (Mia Katigbak), and daughter, Ruth (Jennifer Ikeda), caught in the shadow of their migratory ancestor, Leah (Kristine Haruna Lee). Saying that it does is akin to saying that anyone who prizes a kaddish cup, that apparently most synechdocal of objects, is Jewish. (Which is what this play does.) Nobody wants to see last-resort theater, but that's what Jean Randich's direction feels like: "We didn't connect with this play, but here's our best shot."

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Music in the Air

Photo: Joan Marcus

Watching the weak and silly Music in the Air, the 1930s Kern-Hammerstein operetta at Encores!, affords a great opportunity to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the modern musical. On one hand, we have the joy of the grown-up musical. Just the past few years have brought us Caroline, or Change, Light in the Piazza, Spring Awakening, See What I Wanna See, Next to Normal, and Grey Gardens. How amazing and thrilling that these works of art have grown out of a lineage that includes Music in the Air, with its dumb plot, pointless conflicts, boring ingenue and juvenile, and long stretches of nothing happening. (Yes, Kern and Hammerstein also brought us Showboat, probably the more direct progenitor of the musicals just listed, but Music in the Air is no Showboat, even though, strangely enough, it was written afterward.)

On the other hand, we have an amazing array of profoundly talented performers who are being terribly, terribly underutilized. Kristin Chenoweth and Douglas Sills are the best of the best. They have charisma, endless creativity, impeccable comic timing, and singing voices that range from excellent (his) to gorgeous (hers). Why don’t they work more???? For that matter, why doesn’t Donna Murphy work more? Victoria Clark? Christine Ebersole? Marc Kudisch? Brian Stokes Mitchell? I know the answer, of course: musicals are expensive. But just imagine a theatre world where we could see these amazing performers in a never-ending flow of new works by Sondheim, La Chuisa, Finn, Tesori, Guettel, and others we haven't even heard from yet.

The American Plan

photo: Carol Rosegg

The character that Lily Rabe portrays in this revival of Richard Greenberg's play is "special", the kind of fragile wallflower who says whatever pops into her head and who we're meant to find beguiling. Rabe is miscast and doesn't convince as a hypersensitive girl-woman, which makes for a slow-going first act, but the role itself is more than a little precious, a combination of The Heiress and Laura from The Glass Menagerie. The play itself, one of Greenberg's earliest, is far from his best, and except for some business in the second act that I won't reveal here, it's baffling why the care has been taken to give it a Broadway revival. But care has clearly been taken: the production is handsome, the production values high, and most of the performances quite good.

Becky Shaw

Photo: Joan Marcus

All hail Annie Parisse. As the title character in Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw, who doesn’t appear until well into the first act, she manages to accomplish something that the others couldn’t do: make it seem as though something of note is going on. By the time she appears, there’s been much ado about a lot: a lost fortune, a semi-incestuous one-night stand, a Vegas marriage, and dozens of one liners, many quite funny. But somehow the much ado doesn’t add up to anything—other than whining and squabbling—until Parisse appears as the female half of an ill-advised blind date. She’s one of those performers who seem to bring their own spotlight with them, and her every word and movement as the surprising (inconsistent?) Becky fascinate and intrigue. However, even she cannot make Becky Shaw really work. While the play has much to say about love and deceit and how people interact, its point of view seems random since Gionfriddo consistently sacrifices clarity and character to get a laugh. The first act in particular wanders hither and yon without getting anywhere; the second act is entertaining enough that its lack of meaning is less apparent. But, on leaving, I had the same question I had with Prayer for My Enemy and The American Plan: What was this play really about?

Great Hymn of Thanskgiving/Conversation Storm

Although the ability to ignore reality over a luxurious dinner and the knack for using torture are unfortunately unoriginal things in this country, the Nonsense Company's duet of one-acts is still terrifyingly original. They put the "fun" back in "fungible," first with "Great Hymn of Thanksgiving," a work for "three speaking percussionists" and then, without pause--for when are there breaks in life--with "Conversation Storm," a lightning-quick extrapolation--using theatrical techniques--of what torture inevitably leads to. It's political theater, but at times it is unrecognizably so, which is to its credit.

[Read on]

Flyovers

photo: Carol Rosegg

The dialogue in Jeffrey Sweet's play, set following a high school reunion, tells us why the successful celebrity film critic (Richard Kind) elects to spend an evening with the blue collar bum (Kevin Greer) who bullied him all through high school, but after a certain point the situation strains credibility. The bully isn't especially contrite, and his antisemitism and bitter hostility toward the liberal elite are so obvious that the critic seems like he's asking for trouble by hanging around. Trouble comes, on cue, when fellow ex-classmate Iris (Michelle Pawk) drops in and rekindles the critic's long-held torch. The ensuing business comes as no surprise, since the playwright has oversold the veiled menace in the bully's dialogue right from the start. Still, Kind and Pawk give terrific, well-judged naturalistic performances, expertly scaled for the intimacy of the tiny 78th Street Theater Lab.

The Third Story

photo: Joan Marcus

Kathleen Turner has rarely seemed above sending herself up. Her casting opposite Charles Busch in his new play would seem to promise a lip-smacking treat - a match made in camp heaven between a drag icon who adores Hollywood screen women and a game, one-time real-life Hollywood siren. One of The Third Story's many disappointments is that it confines Turner almost entirely to a (relatively straight) framing story where her grand theatricality is a liability rather than an asset: her throaty voice and broad delivery are at odds with what's needed to put over her material. The play is almost entirely divided between scenes where Turner plays a screenwriter collaborating on a script with her son (Jonathan Walker), and scenes from the movie the two are writing, circa 1949, which often feature Busch in lady mob boss drag. The Busch scenes are more lively than the Turner ones, and the supporting cast has the right arched eyebrow style for them, but the play's structure forbids comic momentum.

Sixty Miles To Silver Lake

photo: Monique Carboni

It takes just a short while to realize that we're watching a father and his son not on one car ride but on several, in short scenes spanning at least a handful of years. Rather than arranging the scenes chronologically, the playwright (Dan Lefranc) repeatedly jump-cuts forward and backward to heighten the recurring motifs in their conversations: on one trip, Dad is supportive of his son's soccer playing, but a moment later during a different car ride he's cruelly dismissive, reducing his son's extracurricular soccer to "day care with cleats". What emerges from the playwright's structure is initially fascinating - the juxtapositions of the scenes struck me as a means to illustrate the cumulative damage caused by the careless things that parents say to children - but the ninety-minute one-act, despite Anne Kauffman's fluid direction and fully convincing performances by Joseph Adams and Dane Dehaan, nonetheless runs out of gas around the hour mark. While the playwright succeeds at mining the grotesque from the ordinary in the dynamic between the father and son, their story is finally too ordinary to sustain our full engagement all the way to the play's end. Despite that, this is a playwright well worth watching out for, and a play well worth seeing.

The Fantasticks

I took advantage of the 20at20 off-Broadway promotion (in effect through Feb. 8) to catch The Fantasticks for $20. (Actually $21.50.) What better way to spend Super Bowl Sunday afternoon, after all, than attending a classic piece of musical theater? There wasn't very much to note; it's The Fantasticks, after all. Subbing for Lewis Cleale was Scott Willis, who made a formidable El Gallo. I teared up at "They Were You." A basic good time was had by all. There was something a tiny bit odd about the venue, though. It's in the Jerry Orbach Theater, in the Snapple Theater Center. Hence the lobby has a dual Snapple-and-Jerry-Orbach theme. Wonder what Orbach - who was in The Fantasticks when it first opened off-Broadway, in 1960, long before Snapple was a gleam in some marketer's eye - would have thought. The Fantasticks: maybe not the best stuff on Earth, but for a Jackson plus a buck-fifty, how can you go wrong? Bonus lobby feature: read all about Jerry Orbach during intermission.

Ruined

Photo: Joan Marcus

[I too would like to take a moment to introduce myself. I'm Wendy Caster and I'm a writer-of-all-trades. I've had plays produced at the Manhattan Theatre Source's Estrogenius Festival, my short movie You Look Just Like Him is being edited, I have short stories in various anthologies, and I also work as a business, medical, and/or tech writer, depending on the assignment. I saw my first show when I was 14--The King and I, with Constance Towers and Michael Kermoyan--and knew that I had found heaven. I'm delighted to be part of Show Showdown.]

There are shows that resist being reviewed. Ruined is one of them. Its topic--the endless, vicious, war-time sexual violence against women--is so devastating and important that to start discussing dialogue, lighting, or scenery seems trivial and churlish. I was so involved, so moved, that I spent the second act hugging my fleece jacket like a security blanket.

On the other hand, it seems equally churlish to ignore the imagination, intelligence, talent, bravery, and hard work that goes into creating a piece of theatre like Ruined. Lynn Notage's hard-hitting script turns the news coverage of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (of which there is not enough) into the human particulars that make other people's lives--and suffering--real to an audience. The uniformly excellent actors, particularly the women, show us both the profound suffering and the quotidian life-goes-on-ness of people under seige. Director Kate Whoriskey calibrates the emotional arc of the story perfectly, so that each shock is individually earned. Ruined has already had an extremely successful run at the Goodman in Chicago and opens officially on February 10th.

Raised in Captivity

[Greetings! As this is my first post at Show Showdown, here's a quick introduction: I'm Jon Sobel, a New York theater critic. (I'm also a music writer and a musician.) I'm the Theater Editor of Blogcritics Magazine, where our theater series is called Stage Mage, and I also post at my own blog, The Bagel and the Rat, where you can usually find my theater and music criticism as well as the occasional book review, political ramble, or reflective grumble about life in New York City.]

A parent gets sick or dies; damaged or estranged family members gather. This is the ur-text of present-day American theater. We can't avoid this fundamental plot machine. But we can appreciate what different playwrights do with it. Dark drama, comedy, absurdity - all are valid approaches. But the talented playwright Nicky Silver tries all three in Raised in Captivity, and perhaps inevitably, though he nails various targets over the course of the longish two-acter, he ultimately gets spun around one too many times and pins the tail on the Led Zeppelin poster.

[Read on]

Photo by Nathan Johnson.

Terre Haute

Peter Eyre does a flawless Gore Vidal and Nick Westrate a short-fused, intense Timothy McVeigh in this 80-minute drama (by Edmund White) that imagines the famous author interviewing the infamous Oklahoma City bomber. The two, given fictional names here, never met face to face: the play is an imagining of what they might have discussed if they had. For a long while, as the men suss out first the commonality and then the differences in their belief systems, the play has an electricity thanks to the excellent performances and the gravity of the men's topics. But the play backs away from true political complexity, and ultimately winds up more concerned with the well-worn subtext of the relationship between the men rather than with their ideas. Although the play held my strict attention for an hour, I found the final scene so disappointing and irrelevant that it ultimately cheapened and ruined the play for me.

Cornbury: The Queen's Governor

photo: Gustavo Monroy

Historical lore has long held, perhaps erroneously, that Edward Hyde (aka Lord Cornbury), New York's governor in the early 1700's until he was forcibly ousted from office, was an outrageous cross-dresser and rumored sodomite. This campy farcical comedy (by Anthony Holland and William M. Hoffman) depicts him as a silly lavender-scented fop whose lavish wardrobe bills nearly bankrupt the city. He's meant to be someone we cheer for, as the small minded Dutch citizens all but light torches to storm the Governor's mansion, but the play's sensibilities are decades out of date and lack any naughty kick: we're past cheering cross dressing for its own sake, especially when it's as cutified as it is here and divorced of sexuality. Before the play becomes hopelessly monotonous, David Greenspan's performance has some appeal - he can twist a line reading for maximum effect - but he would be a lot more enjoyable if he was the only one chewing the scenery. Instead, nearly every one in the cast is pitched for hysteria as if they're in a bad Mel Brooks movie. (One notable exception: Christian Pedersen) Paul Rudnick might have done something both funny and thematically interesting around the Cornbury myth but these playwrights simply use the character as an 18th century poster boy for diversity, with his Native American friend, African-American handmaiden, lesbian barkeeps, and Jewish accountant meant to lend him rainbow coalition cred (even as the play tries to score un-PC yuks off each).

The Judgment of Paris

Photo/Steven Schreiber

Austin McCormick's The Judgment of Paris could not have found a better place than the Duo Theater, the sort of decayed Moulin Rouge-type place, gilded proscenium and all, that signifies the cost of maintaining beauty. The free Ferrero Rocher on every chair (an expensive type of cheap chocolate) and Olivera Gajic's slightly frayed can-can costumes are further extensions of that thought; Marchese's interpretation of Aphrodite as the Russian mistress of a brothel solidifies it. While these consistencies hold things together, McCormick (and his Company XIV ensemble) are free to giddily romp through their spin on Paris's story. And though they pull from several sources (including, rather appropriately, Chuck Mee's Agamemmnon 2.0), it's their own text, which creates the sort of coherent throughline that experimental works benefit from. McCormick has labeled The Judgment of Paris as "a dramatic entertainment." Thankfully, he has not tarnished the beauty of either one.

[Read on]

Aristocrats

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Sixty Miles to Silver Lake

Photo/Monique Carboni

Every moment between a father and son adds up, creating and sustaining the dynamic that they will share for the rest of their lives. Dan LeFranc's brilliant Sixty Miles to Silver Lake packs seven years of development into one cramped car, the outstanding Joseph Adams and Dane DeHaan neatly unpack it, and director Anne Kauffman, as always, keeps the whole thing moving with a realism that encompasses even the dreamier bits at the end. By setting the whole thing inside a car, even casual exchanges take on a deeper level of intimacy, and by skipping (without missing a beat) through time, LeFranc is able to show how that intimacy develops (or not). It's the mark of a talented writer that he is able to reveal such recognizable characters without resorting to cliche, and the mark of an outstanding team that it never slows down.

[Read on]

Krapp, 39

Photo/Dixie Sheridan

Though he worries about it on stage, losing Samuel Beckett's character, Krapp, was the best thing to ever happen to Michael Laurence. Without that fallback, the actor is left with only bits of himself to show, and that allows this "autobiographical 'documentary' theater piece" to--if not transcend Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape--then at least to complement it. The whole conceit is pretty terrific, for in his efforts to prepare the way for a performance thirty years off, he delves all the way back to his childhood, musing not just on mortality but on the theatricality of life.

[Read on]

Leaves Of Glass

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Theater Is Dead And So Are You

Photo/Carrie Leonard

Like a cross between Weekend at Bernie's and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Stolen Chair Ensemble's latest production is a slapstick think-piece, set in the vaudeville tradition. Some of the bits may come across a bit cold, but the ensemble's creativity and heart are alive and kicking. According to the playwright Kiran Rikhye, it's "the best and only live dead theatre that twelve to eighteen dollars can buy," which is true, especially when she's on--as with delightfully upbeat songs like "He Was Dead" and a corpse's performance of Romeo and Juliet. And when her meditations threaten to get weighted down by the convention, director Jon Stancato is there to save the day.

[Read on]

The Cherry Orchard

photo: Joan Marcus

Sam Mendes' production of this Chekhov classic, which uses a new adaptation by Tom Stoppard, is a disappointment which fails to sound the needed notes of melancholy. The moments that ring true are few and far between: the talented cast, comprised of both British and American performers, doesn't register as a cohesive team, a problem that is compounded by staging that rarely creates the illusion that it's organic. Audiences coming fresh, without having seen another version before, might well question the play's reputation: the characters are reduced to stick figures.

A Little Night Music

A starry, likely once-in-a-lifetime cast assembled for what turned out to be a thrilling, unforgettable benefit reading of this Sondheim masterpiece, yet to be revived on Broadway. Some were revisiting roles played elsewhere before (Victor Garber, Marc Kudisch), but most were coming fresh: all showed up, despite the limited rehearsal time, with fully realized performances. Natasha Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave, the benefit's greatest casting coup, would have been more than enough on their own to make the evening special - Richardson's beguiling performance as Desiree capped with her nakedly emotional rendition of "Send In The Clowns", Redgrave's expert line readings bringing comic zing and fresh vitality to Madame Armfeldt - but all the casting was inspired. With her rare talent for barbing a one-liner, Christine Baranski has long seemed like she'd be a sensational Charlotte, and she was: the comic chemsitry between her and Kudisch, an absolutely ideal Carl-Magnus, was musical theatre heaven. I wasn't surprised that Stephen Pasquale aced young idealistic Henrik, but I was stunned that Jill Paice, an eleventh hour replacement for Laura Benanti, proved to be a revelation as child-bride Anne. Many have stumbled in the role, condascending to it rather than playing the girlishness with conviction, but Paice got it exactly right. As Petra, otherwise known as the servant who gets to sing "The Miller's Son" in the second act, Kendra Kassebaum was in the same league as Natascia Diaz, who brought down the house a few years back in the role at the Kennedy Center: high praise indeed. Because the full orchestra was center stage, and the actors seated to the sides except when needed at the row of stools at music stands, I sometimes found myself looking over at Vanessa Redgrave as she watched her fellow actors. Emotionally engaged, curious, highly attentive and ready with applause: she's not only the greatest living actress, she's probably the world's greatest audience member.

Psychos Never Dream

An unstaged reading of a new four-character play by Denis Johnson, clearly not meant for review. Still, I can't help mentioning that Deidre O'Connell was spot-on (isn't she always?) in the supporting role of a deputy sheriff.

The Shipment

Young Jean Lee's latest play, The Shipment, asks a lot of questions about racial identity and identification, but while she writes as directly as Thomas Bradshaw, her work here challenges the audience by imitating--perfectly--the very forms it comments on, be that urban dance, stand-up comedy, or song. There's a satirical send-up of one man's rise to rap stardom, hammy and full of stereotypes, but also a subtler one-act that deals with a dinner party gone wrong. By not hitting us in the head with the hammer, however, Lee leaves us waiting for the punch long after the show ends.

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England

Photo/Martin Kaufhold

Location, location, location is true, even with theater, for by setting his latest play, England, in an art gallery, Tim Crouch has managed to feed his neutral, restrained monologue by surrounding it with passion of another sort. In the echoes of the large gallery space, the text overlaps and starts to resemble a heartbeat. A brilliant ambient sound design by Dan Jones helps to add a throbbing intensity to the show, one heightened by the effect of standing up for the first half of the show. Just as photographs cannot capture the layers on a canvas, neither can a description of the pointedly flat script evoke the three-dimensional effect.

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Architecting

photo: Eamonn McGoldrick

It begins casually, house lights still up: we're the audience in a New Orleans bar while a singer and a guitarist perform a low-key set. Soon, however, the deceptively loose beginning gives way to a dynamic, thematically stimulating piece which throws a current-day Yankee real estate developer (who's come to demolish the bar) into conflict with the ways of the Old South. "It's like they're still fighting the Civil War down here" she says in a phone call home, as the people around her morph into the author of, and characters from, Gone With The Wind. The narrative structure of the piece (part of the Under The Radar Festival at The Public) is adventurous but purposeful - before long we're also watching a current-day Hollywood producer enlist an African-American film director (played by a white actor) to helm and star in an unfaithful, politically correct remake of the movie. Although overlong, and not always smoothly staged, Architecting is captivating mostly because it's uncomfortable - its high-minded ruminations on how we construct history don't go down easy when they play out in scenes such as the one (adapted from the novel) where Scarlett O'Hara defends a slave from the verbal abuse of a Yankee woman. If such scenes aim to show us nuance and contradiction, or the "truth of the times", they backfired for me. To use Gone With The Wind for its place in the American consciousness is one thing, but to invest in it as truth is another.

Architecting

Photo/Eamonn McGoldrick

The four distinct sections of Architecting, the TEAM's latest look at America, never satisfyingly cohere--at least, not as elegantly as in their metaphoric Chartres Cathedral--but at least they've got a term for it: thermodynamic history. This free-associative interpretation of events allows them to convert, conflate, and merge Americana, throwing it together in the hopes of creating something altogether new. The energy is there, but the frame of Architecting is so much larger than that of their last, the more centralized Particularly in the Heartland, that a lot of that hard work goes up in a puff of confusedly entertained smoke.

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Shrek

photo: Joan Marcus

I wanted to see the Broadway musical of Shrek with a non-industry, paying audience before writing about it, and now that I have, I can say with confidence that it's an audience pleaser. (At least it is with this original cast - all bets are off next Fall if/when some of these principals are replaced.) Though the sets and costumes look no-expense-spared and the orchestra is sufficiently staffed so that it actually sounds like one, the show's real bang for the buck is delivered by the abundance of personality and winning appeal of the performers. Even an audience who's never heard of Sutton Foster quickly knows they are watching a genuine modern-day musical comedy star - the girlish-goofy physicality in her performance as Princess Fiona warms the house and puts everyone at ease. Brian D'Arcy James, unrecognizably skull-capped, ogre-eared and tinted green, brings the right amount of heart as Shrek and keeps the character from being, well, just a cartoon. Daniel Breaker, as his sidekick Donkey, avoids the road marked "Created By Eddie Murphy" and spins his every bit into a solid laugh, whether funny on the page or not. And Christopher Sieber, amusingly on his knees nearly all night to create the illusion that he's dwarfed, hams it up deliciously as the story's villain Prince. Supporting cast are all terrific top to bottom, especially in the energetic, sometimes witty dance numbers. The book is fine for what it is - it has the same jokey spirit as the Shrek movies, and although some have faulted its lapses into bathroom humor, I don't see any reason why a family-friendly comedy like this one shouldn't make some concessions to the pre-teen boys in the audience. The big downside of the show is that its score continually lets it down - unlike Billy Elliot, which triumphs despite a merely serviceable score, the substandard and rarely funny songs in Shrek put a drag on the show and prevent it from adding up to more than the sum of its parts.

Die Roten Punkte: Super Musikant

photo: Christine Fiedler

The brainchild of performer-musicians Daniel Tobias and Clare Bartholomew, Die Roten Punkte are a brother-sister pop punk band whose often very funny show is finally in New York this weekend, following much-awarded engagements at Fringe Festivals in Canada. It's easy to see why this show won Best Comedy at last year's Victoria Fringe - the duo have a gift for comic delivery and for improvisation within the "concert" format of the show, and their mock-serious solidly-crafted send-ups of new wave music are often hilarious. (The funniest has the two dancing the robot to a Krafterwerk-like beat made only of cowbell, three repeating synth notes and a drum machine.) The show's narrative, which exists mostly in the banter between the duo's songs, may be slight - Astrid, just out of rehab, eventually gets a talking-to from her "straight edge" brother Otto because she's been spiking her Vitamin Water with booze all night - but the slightness doesn't matter: the show's disarming humor comes not from the narrative but from character, and Tobias and Bartholomew have honed Otto and Astrid to perfection. The audience didn't seem to initially know what to make of the show - it took a couple of songs before there was clear permission to laugh - but after that it was practically a party. I doubt there was anyone there who hadn't been made a fan.

Eight

We draw our own conclusions about the eight young men and women of Eight before they even say a word. That's partially why the writer and director, Ella Hickson, has them stand in a silent line as the audience files in. They don't remain blanks for long: each has a monologue—the theatrical form of the short story—and over the course of the next few hours, they'll share them. While the characters may not have found a place for themselves, Hickson certainly has: she's a darkly comic playwright, social critic, and youthful voice, all balled up into one. Considering how rushed-to-Fringe this was, it's remarkable that only two of the monologues seem forced (and only comparatively so); as for her language, it's near miraculous.

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Transition

Photo/Noah Kalina

Reggie Watts is a bullshit artist, but a serious one. His deadpan act deconstructs both sound and comedy: imagine a hip-hop Andy Kaufman and you'll still be confused. Just know that Watts's entertainment comes first; the incidental laughs spray like shrapnel. Also, know that Watts gets away with it. The solipsism fades in front of an audience, especially a downtown crowd, and if his performance sometimes seems the equivalent of a precocious child taping a private radio program in front of a mirror, he at least has the voice of a DJ and the technical skills of a sound engineer. However, while the title implies that Reggie Watts is going somewhere, he isn't there yet.

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Wickets

There are no seatbelts on the mock airplane set of Jenny Rogers’s adaptation of Maria Irene Fornes’s Fefu & Her Friends. None are needed: Wickets is engaging and smooth, but it’s hardly dramatically turbulent. Nor should it be: by sticking to the surfaces, co-directors Rogers and Clove Galilee are being true to the eight stewardesses on Wicket Air Flight #1971. (The feminist content has been updated from 1935 to 1970.) The deeper truths come out in loose yet cryptic monologues, and through an interpretation of Fornes’s experimental style that collages text and breaks out into song and dance.

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Hello 2009!

Another year, another blog butt-kicking by Aaron, who handily won our race (again) and probably saw more shows than David and I did. Combined. Stamina, thy name is Aaron Riccio.

You've no doubt noticed that David has been posting only sporadically for the last six months. I don't want to speak for him, but I don't think he'd mind my saying that his focus began to change after he had his own show up last Winter. Come back to the five and dime David Bell, David Bell.

I can't wrap my mind around Show Showdown without David having some part in it, so the door will always remain open for him to post here whenever he is inspired to. Nonetheless, with David engaged only irregularly, it's impossible for me to imagine doing another blog race this year.

That said, Aaron and I both want to keep on posting on here, mostly because we see the value in a theatre review team blog that can concisely cover a wide range of theatre, many times with more than one take on the same show.

We're going to be joined this year by my friend Cameron Kelsall, who used to maintain a blog I thoroughly enjoyed and who has written for New Theater Corps. Look for his posts very soon.

In addition to Cameron, we'd all love to find yet another articulate theatre junkie to join us in '09. Email me if you're interested.

And now, here comes all the theatre we can manage to see in 2009. Thank you all for reading and for loving theatre.

Emmet Otter's Jug-band Christmas

photo: Diane Sobolewski

Jim Henson Productions and Goodspeed Musicals have joined up to stage Henson's much-loved 1977 tv musical, and the charming result ought to be a perennial hit. Essentially a woodland creatured revision of The Gift of The Magi in which puppets and actors co-mingle as animal characters, the musical is agreeably low-key rather than brash and enjoyably cute rather than precious. Although Paul Williams' score is only serviceable, and the show's pace at times a tad sluggish, the production aces one of theatre's toughest tests and holds tykes in rapt attention thanks not only to Henson's delightful, by now familiar puppets but also to the expert cast whose performances have been well-scaled to the material. Most obviously terrific are Cass Morgan as Ma Otter and Daniel Reichard as her son Emmet, both highly accomplished music theatre performers who bring warmth and a gentle touch to their characterizations. But there's also plenty of skill on display elsewhere from performers in supporting roles, from the unseen puppeteers who play a pack of red squirrels in a running bit that gets the show's biggest laughs, to Alan Campbell and Kate Wetherhead, who bring just the right tone and amount of personality as a father and daughter whose Christmas Eve heart-to-heart is the stage musical's added framing device. Even the three minor characters who fill out Emmet's band are given amusing, memorable characterizations from Robb Sapp, Daniel Torres, and the always hilarious Jeff Hiller.