Anyone Can Whistle

A legendary flop, Anyone Can Whistle ran for nine days in 1964. Did it fail because it was ahead of its time? Were the critics and audiences blinds to its brilliance? Uh, no. As the excellent production at Encores! reveals, it's just not a particularly good show. Could it have been saved by a better book than Arthur Laurents'? Possibly. The score is glorious, full of show stoppers ("Me and My Town," "Everybody Says Don't") and heartbreaking emotion ("Anyone Can Whistle," "With So Little to Be Sure Of"). The basic idea is an engaging old standby: crazy people being saner than sane people. The theme--live your life to the fullest--is vintage Broadway. But that book is a clunker, with weak jokes, badly delineated relationships, and unmotivated changes of heart. (In all fairness, Encores! did not present the entire book, so perhaps it is better than it seems in this production. However, reviews of the orginal production suggest that it is not). In addition to providing the mediocre book, Arthur Laurents directed the original production; if his work on West Side Story and Gypsy is any indication, his direction probably was no gift to the production. Luckily, the Encores! production is directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw, who maximizes the show's gifts and provides choreography that ranges from tongue-in-cheek hysterical to gorgeously emotional. The cast is superb. Raul Esparza plays Dr. Hapgood with complete commitment and the ability to renew songs that have been sung a thousand times by a thousand people. Sutton Foster delivers "There Won't Be Trumpets" with perfect fervor and "Anyone Can Whistle" with perfect simplicity. Donna Murphy, all knees and elbows, raises sheer unmitigated hamminess to an art form.

The Scottboro Boys

Despite a compelling story, an excellent cast, and some lovely songs, Kander and Ebb's musical, The Scottsboro Boys, fails to pay off. Kander and Ebb have already told us that life is a cabaret, as well as a steel pier, full of razzle dazzle and corruption. Here, along with book writer David Thompson and director-choreographer Susan Stroman, they make the claim that life, at least for the real-life African-American men unjustly arrested for a rape they did not commit, is a minstrel show. Or their trials were a minstrel show. Or other people saw them as a minstrel show. Or something. As an overarching metaphor, the minstrel show fails in many ways, not just in its lack of clarity. It takes focus off of the story, it tries to make the audience complicit for something the audience did not do, and it's painful to watch. As just one example, Stroman's decision to combine energetic tap-dancing with nightmare scenarios manages to dilute both the dancing and the nightmares. In addition, the minstrel humor is mostly flat-out bad and the whole concept is ultimately a distraction. Some reviewers have called this show provocative and daring. I found it flat and disappointing.

Red

photo: Johan Persson

With its pronounced lack of subtext and its relentlessly unimaginative seriousness, John Logan's two-hander about painter Mark Rothko and his fresh-faced assistant is certainly of a piece. Due to high production values, chief among them Neil Austin's purposeful lighting, it's also visually compelling. It isn't, unfortunately, especially believable: despite the actors' efforts these are two opposed sides of an argument, not flesh and blood characters. The 90-minute one-act casts Rothko (a committed, focused Alfred Molina) as the self-absorbed last gasp of "serious" art, holding the gates closed against the Pop Art barbarians who are making his work increasingly irrelevant, circa 1958. His speeches, which sound like interview quotes researched and cobbled together, are spat at the generally passive assistant (Eddie Redmayne) for 2/3rd's of the play's 90 minutes. It's like a somber Devil Wears Prada for middlebrow snobs. The teacher/student device is as dramaturgically limp as it sounds, more so once the assistant reveals a backstory that scores a perfect zero for believability. The play eventually gets going in its last half hour, when the assistant finally stands up to the bullying boss and calls him a sell out for making pictures to adorn the new Four Seasons restaurant. It isn't the old art vs. commerce conflict that gives late life to the play but the overdue deeper depiction of Rothko - he's suddenly exposed to us as an old man who sees that the times have moved beyond him and who worries how time will judge him. It isn't hard to be moved by that, even in a contrivance such as this.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson

photo: Joan Marcus

A smart bad-ass show that illustrates the 7th U.S. President's celebrity and maverick status by anachronistically depicting him as an Emo rock god, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson pokes snarky fun at rock musicals (Spring Awakening, especially) while putting over some provocative ideas about Andrew Jackson’s legacy. Was he a hero or an American Hitler? Was the populism he preached a recipe for pure democracy or for chaos? The often snarky pop musical (songs by Michael Friedman) isn’t out to make a definitive statement and it steadfastly refuses to get too serious until the very end, but that’s part of its infectious appeal. As written and staged by Alex Timbers, it’s silly and smartypants at the same time. (Has any other show, ever, made jokes about both Cher and Susan Sontag?) Benjamin Walker is right on target as Jackson, simultaneously no-nonsense and whiny adolescent, heading a cast that is well-attuned to the jokey spirit that guides most of the material.

Lend Me A Tenor

photo: Joan Marcus

Ken Ludwig's screwball farce, in which a milquetoast has to pass for a world-famous opera star, may take too long to get going to be counted as a truly top-drawer example of the genre, but its opportunites for physical comedy make it a stitch anyhow. I doubt it could be shown off to more hilarious, fast-paced advantage than in the current Broadway revival, which packs in more laughs than minutes. Under Stanley Tucci's direction just about everyone in the cast, from Justin Bartha (as the milquetoast) to Anthony LaPaglia (as the opera star) to Jan Maxwell (as the opera star's wife), plays with the zest of a seasoned farceur. Actors can easily push this kind of slamming doors comedy too hard - aggressive mugging is an occupational hazard of the genre - but the exaggeration here isn't out of scale with the stakes the material demands. Perhaps the finest example of this is Tony Shalhoub's central performance as the Opera company's increasingly unhinged executive director: he could bellow his way through the character and score himself easy laughs, but instead he simmers just below the boiling point. The play is ultimately funnier for it. Special hats-off to the curtain call, a zany fast forward through the whole play in 3 minutes.

Come Fly Away

photo: Ruven Afanador

Twyla Tharp's evening set to Frank Sinatra songs doesn't add up to a musical in the way that her Billy Joel show Movin' Out did, partly because Joel's catalog came pre-equipped for the stage with characters and a narrative specificity that Sinatra songs lack. While each of the principal dancers is playing a character and expressing a distinct personality, the show isn't organized by a plot as much as by a general theme (of romantic love). However that's more than enough, thanks to Tharp's artistry and to the phenomenal abilities of her dancers, to hold Come Fly Away together as a transporting, often spellbinding show. By any standard I know, the dancing is spectacular. Tharp's choreography is highly expressive and individuated to her performers, whether pitched for comedy (Charlie Neshyba and Laura Mead, depicting a clumsy courtship) or for drama (Karine Plantadit and Keith Roberts, depicting a bruising love affair). Except for a curtain call that borders on the Vegas brand of tacky (in which the stars in the sky form a constellation to honor Ol' Blue Eyes), the show is artful and intelligent, the aesthetic opposite of this season's other Broadway dance show Burn The Floor.

Yank!

Photo: Carol Rosegg

While cutting-edge musicals are wonderful (all hail Sondheim!), there's something particularly lovely about traditional musicals covering new ground. Take, for example, the excellent Yank! (finishing its run this weekend at the York Theatre Company), which tells the story of a Stu, a young soldier in World War II who falls in love with one of his squadmates. Using a traditional structure and sound, the brothers Zellnik (music, Joseph; book and lyrics, David) and director Igor Goldin skillfully combine an evocative 1940s-esque score, a romantic storyline, energetic tap numbers and a beautiful ballet, cheerfully stereotypical supporting characters (the soldier from Brooklyn, the Italian-American soldier, etc), life and death issues, and gay history 101 to create a musical that is moving, funny, entertaining, sad, sweet, and meaningful. Bobby Steggert gives a superb performance as Stu. The supporting cast is excellent, particularly Jeffrey Denman, who brings depth to what could have been a one-dimensional character (and also provides the excellent choreography). While I hope this show has the long future it deserves, I was sad to read in Bloomberg News that the producers are holding out for a Broadway run. I totally understand their thinking; they need to maximize their chances of making a profit. But Yank! works perfectly in an intimate theatre. It's a small, emotional story, and unmiked voices suit it well (of course, unmiked voices suit everything well, but that's another story). What a pity that Off-Broadway is no longer an option for most musicals.

[spoilers below]

Online there has been much discussion about Yank! While the buzz is generally extremely positive, there have been some complaints and questions. For example, some people ask if the show needs the dream ballet. I don't know that it needs it, but the choreography is lovely, and I really enjoyed the same-sex romance of it. Second: Is the frame needed? I think the frame is important for one main reason: without it, the show ends on a sad, lonely note. With it, there's a sense of things getting better over time. (On the other hand, that journal would have gotten Mitch in trouble along with Stu and Artie, so its use within the show needs work.) Third: Is the show too preachy? I didn't find it so. I think that people in those circumstances would indeed talk overtly about gay rights, and I found their conversations believable. Forth: Were the men in the steno pool too aggressively fey? I thought so. Yes, there were fey men around in those days, but these performances occasionally cross the line into caricatures.

The Diary of A Teenage Girl

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Ching Chong Chinaman

Reviewed for Theatermania.

The Boys in the Band

[possible spoilers below]

Rather than a coherent whole, The Boys in the Band comes across as two somewhat-related one-act plays. In the first, a bunch of gay men get together for a party and are snotty, fey, and funny. In the second, things get mean as too much alcohol is consumed, until Michael, the lead character, cries, "Why must we [homosexuals] hate ourselves?" But there is no evidence that the men do hate themselves for being gay. Harold hates being ugly; Donald feels scarred by his parents; Hank wishes that Larry would be monogamous; Larry wishes that Hank would accept an open relationship; Emory wishes he could get laid more often; Bernard wishes that the love of his youth loved him. Given a choice, Hank might choose to be straight, but for most of these men being gay is simply not the issue. It's almost as though author Mart Crowley wrote non-self-hating homosexuals despite himself. (I also didn't buy that even copious amounts of alcohol could turn the people in the first act into the people in the second act.) The not-uninteresting Transport Group Theatre Company production takes place in someone's penthouse rather than in a theatre, offering the audience a nice you-are-there sense of being at the party. However, in order to maintain the illusion, the show is presented without intermission, making the disconnect between the first and second acts even more jarring. The cast is uneven; the strongest performances are given by Jonathan Hammond, Christopher Innvar, and Nick Westrate. Director Jack Cummings III has chosen to pace the show slowly, with frequent, long pauses, particularly in the second act. I imagine he wants the effect to be profound, but it is frequently ponderous.

When the Rain Stops Falling

Family dramas often comprise similar ingredients: multiple generations, estranged relatives, alcoholism and/or drug addiction, long-kept secrets, deep attachments and deeper disappointments, and, perhaps, a touch of adultery, murder, incest, molestation, or some other dramatic sin. The challenge then becomes to present these ingredients in new, surprising, and freshly engaging ways. In When the Rain Stops Falling, author Andrew Bovell, director David Cromer, the designers, and the cast combine their prodigious skills to turn a not-particularly-unusual story into a profoundly emotional, satisfyingly theatrical epic. Their tools include a fractured timeline and poetically repetitive language that heighten the story-telling; compassionate, precise acting that allows the characters a certain grandeur, even when they are far from grand; and design elements that bring the audience into the center of the (physical and emotional) storms on stage. Simply put, the production of When the Rain Stops Falling at Lincon Center does indeed manage to present the familiar ingredients of a family drama in a new, surprising, and freshly engaging way that makes for a thrilling evening in the theatre.

The Book of Grace

photo: Joan Marcus

Elizabeth Marvel is one of the few actors who I'll see in absolutely anything, and you always seems to rise above and deliver when saddled with poor material. Case in point: The Book of Grace, the new play by Pulitzer-winner Suzan-Lori Parks, which is currently receiving a premature world premiere at the Public Theater. Marvel is the titular heroine, a woman whose pursuit of knowledge stands in direct contrast with the wishes of her hard-driving husband (John Doman, appropriately terrifying), an officer in the Texas Border Patrol. When his long-estranged, bi-racial son from a previous marriage (Amari Cheatom) arrives to "forgive but not forget", the fraught atmosphere proves detrimental for Grace, her desire to better herself, and her burgeoning sexuality. Marvel is brilliant at capturing every facet of this complicated character, but Parks has done her a disservice by leaving entire chunks of exposition simply unexplored. It also doesn't help that Cheatom is grimly miscast as the family interloper; he's nowhere near as seething as he should be, and his attempts at anger feel more petulant than anything else. In the end, it's Marvel's show (as usual). Surrounded by text and fellow actors, she still manages to stand alone.

When The Rain Stops Falling

photo: T. Charles Erickson

Andrew Bovell's dour, downbeat play, which flashes back and forward on several Anglo-Aussie family connections over four generations and eighty years, isn't for passive theatregoers; its ambitious structure demands patience and concentration just to connect who is who (despite the characters' family tree in the Playbill). While anything but formulaic, the structure is too clever by half: we're too often engaged with figuring out why the scenes are laid out as they are than with the emotional content. The reason for the challenging structure seems to be that it allows the playwright to delay the defining, key event that clarifies most of the play's characters, but to what end? Despite a sterling production (under David Cromer's direction) and many superb, detailed "kitchen sink" performances - particularly Mary Beth Hurt as an emotionally isolated alcoholic, and Victoria Clark as a wife slowly losing her sanity - the play is only involving as an intellectual puzzle.

+30NYC

The Red Fern Theatre Company describes +30NYC, its intriguing evening of one-acts, as "new plays imaging the next New York." Actually, New York is only important in a few of the plays; a more consistent theme is that the future is nothing to look forward to. In Tommy Smith's subtle tale, Thirty Story Masterpieces (directed by Jessi D. Hill), a young man (the excellent Brian Robert Burns) visits a middle-aged woman (Corinna May). Their conversation seems relatively innocuous (along the lines of, "Would you like a cigarette?" "Sure, why not?"), but a creepy, heartbreaking subtext gradually becomes apparent. In the confusing play in the Zone, a book becomes the center of a dangerous negotiation as well as a symbol of all that has been lost in playwright Michael John Garcés' dystopia. I suspect this might be a good play, but some of the performers were unintelligible; however, Maria-Christina Oliveras was excellent as the outlaw with nothing to lose. The affectingly creepy Fish Bowl, written by Christine Evans and directed by Melanie Moyer Williams, repeats a set of virtually identical lines, over and over, to limn a world where your body is not your own and no one is to be trusted. My favorite of the one-acts, Remembrance Vessel, smartly written by Ashlin Halfnight and well-directed by Melanie Moyer Williams, provides (welcome!) comic relief as the excellent Jessica Cummings, Kathryn Kates, and, in particular, Jordan Kaplan play people discovering that scientific advances can have surprising consequences. The other three plays, Footprint, Dodo Solastalgia, and Rosa's Little Jar of Fear, are all good; they explore, among other things, modular living, the return of the dodo, and airport security, respectively. In all, +30NYC is a strong evening of theatre and far better written, directed, and acted than many other collections of one-acts I have seen.

Adding Machine: A Musical

Photo: Mark L. Saperstein

My sojourn in Boston has given me, not for the first time, the opportunity to see a show that was well-received in a major New York production that I missed. So, while I can't compare Speakeasy's production of Adding Machine: A Musical to the multi-award-winning New York version, I can say that it's a demanding, rewarding, complex, beautiful piece of work. This staging is graced with a marvelous cast and a rich depth of talent, from the musicians and costumes to the lighting and sound and everything in between. Somehow, through the magic of theater, the bleak and barren story of soul-numbing social repression becomes an astonishingly refreshing and rewarding experience. Beautifully acted and sung, and sensitively directed by Paul Melone, with music brilliantly performed by a band of three, it's a triumph. Don't miss it if you're in the Boston area. It runs through April 10 at the Boston Center for the Arts. Read the full review.

All About Me

photo: Joan Marcus

Even if you are a fan of both Michael Feinstein and Dame Edna, as I am, you may feel that watching them take turns on, fight over, and share a stage in their duo show All About Me is a case where two equals less than one. The reason these unique, considerable talents have been put together probably has to do with the economic realities of today's Broadway, because nothing else about pairing Feinstein's elegantly phrased romantic crooning with Dame Edna's acerbic shtick seems to make potential sense. It's like chasing champagne with Scotch all night - one kills your taste for the other. Faced with the task of writing material that makes an evening out of two people who don't belong on stage together, Christopher Durang has basically tried to capitalize on the mismatch by underlining it - the show's conceit is that both stars think they are in a solo show but, accidentally double-booked into the same theatre, are forced to share the spotlight. It's the kind of blatantly artificial set-up that went out with yesteryear's TV specials - Judy answering the doorbell for daughter Liza, who's dropped by "unexpectedly" to delighted applause from the studio audience. It takes a certain know-how to sell that kind of pretend, and neither Dame Edna - whose humor is caustic with a smile - nor Feinstein - so earnest when he tells us between his first songs that his childhood was lonely - are that brand of player. The thin plot business is interminable (save for a stage manager, played by Jodi Capeless, who sends the bickering stars off stage to entertainingly steal the spotlight for herself) - you tolerate it waiting for each star to do what he does best. Despite Dame Edna's more outsize stage personality, and her hoot and a half rendition of Beyonce's "All The Single Ladies" that is the show's comic highlight, it's Feinstein who more regularly satisfies his fans. His polished, often sublime American songbook vocal stylings, whether accompanying himself on piano or working the stage backed by the 14 piece orchestra, are swank and swell. (My one complaint: it's 2010, but even this out gay performer changes the "he" in Oliver!'s "As Long As He Needs Me" to "she".)

Happy in the Poorhouse

Photo: Larry Cobra

Playwright/director Derek Ahonen and the Amoralists specialize in "going there" – that is, where other troupes usually dare not tread. The long opening scene is Ahonen at his best, and he has two fiery actors making it all shine. Now, "going there" is all very well. The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side went where it went with enough focus to sustain itself. Happy in the Poorhouse, though, goes too many places. It has a lot of fun getting there, with memorable characters, much humor, and the kind of elevated working-class writing, self-conscious yet honestly poetic, that marks this playwright as a writer of great talent, and an evident nostalgia for the unsubtle big style of writers of the 1930's. And the troupe is up to the challenge of living his words. What's missing – not throughout, but for significant stretches of both acts – is focus. More characters pile on, announcing themselves with overdone aria-like bombast, and some seem to be there just for local color. Rochelle Mikulich is delightful as Paulie's country-singer little sis, and Matthew Pilieci deserves notice as Mary's preening mailman brother. But the structure feels imposed, the flow uneven. Read the full review.

Sondheim: The Birthday Concert

Photo: New York Philharmonic, Richard Termine

So, is this the Sondheim celebration that Roundabout is doing? No. Is it the one at City Center? No. Is it overkill that so many Sondheim celebrations are being done? NO! The work of Stephen Sondheim is endlessly fascinating, complex, and surprising, and when some of the most talented people on earth perform it, the result is theatrical nirvana. This two-night celebration at the New York Philharmonic added the luxury (and nowadays it is a luxury, alas) of hearing Sondheim's music played by a full orchestra, allowing the expression of the full color, texture, and beauty of his work. In an evening of so many highlights that it was almost overwhelming, some of the super-highlights for me included Marin Mazzie's "Losing My Mind," simultaneously luscious and pointed; Audra McDonald and Nathan Gunn's "Too Many Mornings," gorgeously sung by both of them and gorgeously acted by her; Mandy Patinkin's "Finishing the Hat," hyperintense yet just right; John McMartin's "The Road You Didn't Take," a master class in song acting; and Patinkin and Bernadette Peters' recreation of "Move On," as heartfelt and touching as ever. The show ended with hundreds of performers singing "Sunday" on stage and in the aisles and balconies, which was nothing short of glorious. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "when a person is tired of Sondheim, that person is tired of life."

Happy in the Poorhouse

Photo: Larry Cobra

What do you get when you mix camp, genuine emotion, and poetry? If you're lucky, you get Happy in the Poorhouse, the Amoralists' new play, beautifully written and directed by Derek Ahonen. Down-and-out fighter Paulie "the Pug"; his sexually frustrated wife Mary; their dumb and egotistical roommate Joey the mailman; Paulie's sister Penny the country-western singer; and Mary's ex-husband Petie the vet are just some of the people fighting for their dreams at the top of their lungs in Paulie and Mary's apartment in Coney Island. Anohen provides them with funny, vivid, and revealing dialogue. At one point Mary says, "So what's your point with all this waxing poetry, Paulie?," and Ahonen indeed "waxes poetry" with a unique combination of malapropisms, vulgarity, and bizarre-but-exact metaphors. Ahonen's breakneck pacing and almost-cartoonish characters provide an entertaining roller coaster ride, yet he and the cast never lose sight of the reality of the believably wounded characters and their deep needs. The superb ensemble--led by James Kautz, sweet and heartbreaking as Paulie, and Sarah Lemp, perfect as Mary--nail their Brooklyn accents and beautifully balance on that thin line between good over-the-top and bad over-the-top. Catch Happy in the Poorhouse now (only $40 for adults and $20 for students), and you'll be able to say that you knew Derek Ahonen and the Amoralists when.

Valley of the Dolls - Actors Fund

The decidedly ridiculous pleasures of Valley of the Dolls, still one of the crown jewels of camp movie trash, made their hilarious way onto the stage for this one-night-only reading to benefit Actors Fund. The casting was inspired, which says something considering the revolving door of talents announced, canceled and replaced along the way. Everybody brought comic skill and an infectious party spirit, most especially the 3 gals in the key roles as friends whose lives are melodramatically warped by show biz and pills. As Neely O'Hara, Heidi Blickenstaff uproariously cribbed and exaggerated Patty Duke's sometimes bizarre performance right down to the pitchfork line readings and herky-jerky dance moves. Her laugh out loud hysterical performance set the tone: this was Valley of the Dolls as might have been done by the Carol Burnett Show troupe. As "good girl" Anne Welles, Martha Plimpton went a different, riskier route than straightforward spoof and put an arch, knowing spin on her lines to sensational effect - in their scenes together, she and Craig Bierko (as Lyon Burke) seemed to be having a contest for Eyebrow Raised Highest. Nancy Anderson, as Jennifer North, hilariously lampooned Sharon Tate's amateurish acting - the blank stare, the flat affect - and yet managed to give the character a stealth poignancy. The evening was overstuffed with priceless one-time performances from ones you expected (Charles Busch, a hoot doing Susan Hayward's Helen Lawson) to one you didn't (Troy Britton Johnson, a riot as cheesy lounge singer Tony Polar). This kind of evening is hard to pull off - a couple of false moves, and you're stuck with miserable failed camp - but director Carl Andress, and all those who contributed, pulled this one off spectacularly.

Happy in the Poorhouse

Photo/Larry Cobra

In honor of Derek Ahonen appropriating the dime-novel romance and turning it into Odets and Williams Gone Wild, I'd like to coin a new word to describe Happy in the Poorhouse: melomedy. I'd then like to clarify that while I didn't think this latest piece from the Amoralists packed as deep a punch as their last show, The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side, it still absolutely knocked me out. This cast knows how to hit their marks without toppling into absurdity, and though the show gets too big for its own britches (too packed for a drama, too small for a farce), it does so in a confidently Hulking out sort of way. I wish more attention had been spent on the central conceit: Paulie (James Kautz) must work up the confidence to sleep with his wife, the love of his life Mary (Sarah Lemp), before his ex-best-friend (and her ex-husband), Petie (William Apps) returns from Iraq and steals her back. But at least many of the divergences are creative and interesting, and always charmingly played, particularly by people like Matthew Pilieci (and his sexual sight-gags) and Rochelle Mikulich (who brings new meaning to the word mousy). One of the wackier yet more heartfelt lines of the night goes something like this: "If you don't follow your dreams, you'll get eaten by a shark." Ahonen and company have left that shark far behind: they're living their dream, and this is a great start to what's looking like a terrific 2010 season for them.

[Read on]

Lenin's Embalmers

Vern Thiessen's entertaining, thought-provoking new play, Lenin's Embalmers, tells the true story of former friends called upon to make Lenin's corpse last forever. If they succeed, they will be rich and lauded; if they fail, their lives are over. Vlad (Zach Grenier) is the scientific genius, a drunk who hates the necessary hypocrisies of dealing with the Soviet regime. Boris (Scott Sowers) is the consummate politician, a pragmatist who understands that playing the game is the only road to survival. Out of this dour tale, Thiessen and director William Carden have created a fluid, darkly funny piece about the insanities and horrors of Stalin's regime and how our saints are invented to meet the needs of their time and place. Interestingly, as the embalmers strive to create Stalin's version of Lenin, the playwright creates his own version of Lenin, a wry, sardonic, sad presence, horrified by his deification. This is a first-class production of an excellent play with a uniformly wonderful cast.

God of Carnage

photo: Walter McBride

The newish ensemble that just took over Yasmina Reza's Tony-winning smash--Janet McTeer (the original London Veronica), Jeff Daniels (the original Broadway Alan, now playing Michael), Lucy Liu and Dylan Baker--is easily the finest cast the show has seen yet. As a group they completely click, and each actor gives a near-perfect individual performance. The problem with this is that watching the play filtered through the energy and vitality of this updated group makes you realize how thin and unsatisfying an evening of theatre it is. The comedy only really gets good in the last half hour, once the sparks start to fly, and even then it's little more than the theatrical equivalent of junk food. Any attempt to read social commentary or deep meaning into the text is only wishful thinking. That said, watching McTeer violently pin Daniels onto their couch, or hearing Liu proclaim that she'll wipe her ass with the Bill of Rights in a moment of reckless abandon are worth the price of admission. It may be junk, but right now it's tasting pretty good.

The Miracle Worker

There's much to admire in this first Broadway revival of the Anne Sullivan-Helen Keller story - above all else a riveting performance by Abigail Breslin - but, as you've likely already heard, the staging is a serious problem. (It pains me to say it, as I thought director Kate Whoriskey's staging of Ruined last year was flawless.) Presenting this story in the round has to rank as one of the worst ideas in recent Broadway seasons - you can't very well have your deaf and blind central character crossing the room mid-scene so that the other half of the audience can see her, especially when so much of her stage business is sitting and writing letters into the palm of her teacher's hand. With so much non-verbal business, it's especially imperative that the audience be visually connected to the players. My view was so frustrating for the first act that I debated skipping the second, and I could spy seats that were far more problematic than mine. (I'm glad I stayed - no major obstructions to my view after intermission, and the play's final scene is as touching and effective as one could possibly hope.) The ideal seats would appear to be numbered in the 100s and in the low to middle 200s on the even side of the theatre. Sit there.

As You Like It

photo: Sara Krulwich

Last year, when everyone was raving about Sam Mendes' production of The Winter's Tale, I was imploring everyone and their mother to go see his staging of The Cherry Orchard. It was simply the best production of a Chekhov play that I'd seen in New York in over a decade. Once again, I find myself to be the contrarian voice: people are going crazy over his production of The Tempest, which I found interminable, while I am still in awe of his fresh, beautiful take on one of Shakespeare's most oft-performed comedies, As You Like It. Mendes manages to tap into the resources of subtext behind the playwright's comedic scenarios without sacrificing any of the wonderful, ebullient moments of hilarity. The cast is an embarrassment of riches: Juliet Rylance's perfect Rosalind, Christian Camargo's invigorating Orlando, Stephen Dillane's surly Jaques; even the tiniest roles are played with aplomb. Only one performance remains, this Saturday at 2. Don't miss it.

Glee Club

Some initial impulsive energy screeches to a halt once the implausible plot gets under way. The play devolves into a couple of modestly funny jokes stretched over much too long a time. There's lots of yelling and cursing, without the development of character that makes such moments anything but annoying. The only really appealing character is Paul (Steven Burns), an apparent serial killer whose chilling non sequiturs always draw a laugh. The actors do their best with the weak material, but little good results besides some isolated funny lines. The high point: the song, which after much hemming and hawing the all-male glee club of the title finally manages to sing at the end. It perfectly captures the spirited zaniness the rest of the production only hints at. Read the full review.

The Scottsboro Boys

photo: Carol Rosegg

Even by the vaunted standards of other Kander and Ebb musicals, The Scottsboro Boys is an especially potent mix of bitter social comment and rousing showbiz razzle-dazzle. The real-life story from the Deep South in the 30's - of the infamously unjust arrest and prolonged imprisonment of 9 innocent black men for raping 2 white women - is told as if in vignettes in a minstrel show, a bold and excitingly dangerous theatrical conceit that adds exponential layers of subtext. Unlike the duo's Chicago, also about a miscarriage of American justice and prsented as a vaudeville entertainment, The Scottsboro Boys is palpably discomforting by design - it often aims to make you squirm in your seat as it implicates not only societal racism but the racism of the minstrelry it presents. Except for a rarely intrusive framing story that leads to an unneeded, softening coda (that critics have been kindly asked not to reveal), the musical sustains both a remarkable level of stinging anger and a consistent visceral musical-theatre excitement. There's plenty of praise-worthy craft - director/choreographer Susan Stroman has brought her best game to the staging, the book is purposeful and dynamic, the score is accomplished and often sublime, and the performers (particularly John Cullum, Brandon Victor Dixon, Colman Domingo, and Forrest McClendon) are sensational. But you stagger out of the theatre as you should, somehow altered and thinking not about the parts but about the in-your-face sum. Jolting, serious, thrilling, and absolutely unmissable.

Last Life

Rod Kinter's athletic fight choreography for Last Life, one of the hits of The Brick's recent Fight Festival now enjoying a short encore run at The Ohio, is viscerally exciting and technically impressive (and it's far more convincingly executed than what I'm used to seeing on stage). There's also plenty of it - the show hasn't dubbed itself a "fightsical" for nothing. The rough, decidedly R-rated violent smackdowns are underscored with percussive bursts of music, the way they would be in a film: the sometimes edge-of-your-seat stage combat is the main reason for the play and sure to satisfy action-seekers. Tim Haskell's direction adds great additional vitality thanks to a striking meta-theatrical presentation: for much of the play, the actors are seated facing the audience while delivering their lines to each other. Even cooler is a conceit that regularly has the actors freeze mid-fight while an effects guy applies stage blood. Eric Sanders' script is not always entirely clear in laying out the backstory of the characters and the post-apocalyptic setting, but it does what it needs to do in setting up the combat scenes and it wisely does so with some mitigating humor. Special shout-out to lead actor Taimak Guarriello who, whether delivering deadly roundhouse kicks or spoofing an infomercial with tongue in cheek, capably handles his role's varied demands.

The Temperamentals

I had hoped to like The Temperamentals, now transferred to one of the New World Stages, a lot more than I did in its earlier, off-off Broadway incarnation, but by the middle of its first act I was once again slumped in my seat with a case of the Gay History Lesson Blues. The playwright, Jon Morans, should get due socio-cultural credit for dramatizing the mostly overlooked gay rights pioneers who formed the Mattachine Society decades before Stonewall, but did he have to go about it with so heavy a hand? Although the show is not the joyless slog that most "good-for-you" theatre is - there's lively entertainment value in watching the unlikely love relationship unfold between social activist Harry Hay and young fashion designer Rudi Gernreich - it's still essentially the kind of theatre that makes you worry you'll be told to stay after to clap erasers. The playwright makes sure we know that the characters are fighting for something, but that's not as involving as giving them something playable to fight against: the play lacks actable conflict until a new character shows up out of nowhere very late in the first act. The lead performances, by Michael Uhrie and Thomas Jay Ryan, are at all times nuanced and credible, the main reasons to see the show, in fact. Arnie Burton is a clear standout among the otherwise far-from-subtle supporting cast.

The Duchess of Malfi

The Red Bull theatre company specializes in "plays of heightened language." Its latest production, an adaptation of John Webster's gruesome tragedy The Duchess of Malfi, certainly fills the bill. Written in the early 17th century center, The Duchess of Malfi follows the misadventures of the titular duchess, a widow who marries the man she loves despite her brothers' having forbidden her to marry at all. The Red Bull production rushes along, even when taking its time would be a better choice. The cast is uneven; many of the performers are unable to navigate the "heightened language" in a way that is interesting, character-driven, and consistently intelligible. However, the production features enough compellingly theatrical moments to make it worth seeing. (I wonder, though, at what point a piece is so "adapted" as to no longer be the play the author wrote. Have I now actually seen Webster's The Duchess of Malfi?)

Romance Romance

Somehow, in all my years of theatergoing, I had never seen this musical. This small off-off production, performed with two keyboards and running through this weekend as part of the Active Theater Company's season, proved an enjoyable and often charming introduction. The show is comprised of two one-act musicals: the first, adapted from a short story and set in late 19th century Vienna, concerns the often whimsical affair between a well-off confirmed bachelor and a socialite who are each secretly slumming; the second, adapted from a French play to take place present-day in the Hamptons, centers on the temptation for romance between a man and a woman who are best friends but married to other people. As the Viennese lovers, Nick Dalton and Abby Mueller make a far more engaging pair than Nathaniel Shaw and Stephanie Youell Binetti, who lack comparative warmth as the modern-day friends. Despite this, and less than ideal design elements, the show is generally delightful and comes off with a good deal of charm. Even if you're familiar with the material, it's worth catching for Dalton and especially for Mueller, who is altogether wonderful.

Marilyn Maye: In Love Again

Let's cut to the chase: if you have any interest in jazz and can swing the ticket price, go see Marilyn Maye at Feinstein's. She's amazing. But, hey, you don't have to take my word for it. Ella Fitzgerald called her "the greatest white female singer in the world." And she's charming and funny too. Her show is called In Love Again, and she loves romance, the audience, and the universe. I wouldn't say she has the greatest voice in the world, but, man, can she deliver a song. In this show, she focuses mostly on old standards but sings songs by Sondheim and Manilow as well. Her Cole Porter medley is primo A1 great. And her band is excellent (Tedd Firth on piano, Tom Hubbard on bass, and Jim Eklof on drums). My only complaint is that she relies too much on medleys and mashups; I wanted to hear her finish "Being Alive" straightforwardly rather than dipping back into "By Myself." (Note: Feinstein's sometimes has $40 seats without a minimum.)

The Miracle Worker

[spoilers below, though I imagine the odds of anyone reading this website not knowing the whole story are slim]

William Gibson's 1959 play, The Miracle Worker, is a bit creaky. Many of the characters are one-dimensional, and the father-not-respecting-the-son-until-he-yells-at-him subplot is the theatrical equivalent of color-by-numbers. Also, the Circle in the Square theatre works against the play. The actors have to carefully contain the physical scenes. The all-important (both pragmatically and metaphorically) doors are only frames within frames, which negates their power yet doesn't stop them from blocking the view of much of the audience. I and dozens of other people missed a chunk of the climactic scene because Abigail Breslin's back was to us (not getting to see the "waa-waa" moment is ridiculous and unacceptable, really). Whatever the limits of this production, however, the play still packs a wallop, and Alison Pill excels at depicting a young woman who has invented herself out of intelligence, anger, strength of will, and compassion.

Legs and All

A girl (Summer Shapiro) attempts to outwit her unwieldy arms and legs by using only her head to eat crackers and winds up doing a hand-stand atop a box as she tries to reach a morsel that's fallen to the floor. A boy (Peter Musante) attempts to steal a misplaced ball without being noticed, unaware that his suspender is tangled up in a loud suitcase. Apart, they're endearingly comic; together, they're relentlessly charming. Legs and All is a terrifically inventive, perspective-shifting physical work, and it successfully lives up to its subtitle, "A magical look at the mundane." I couldn't possibly gush enough: go and see it.

[Read on]

The Wonder

Photo: Bob Pileggi

Farce is difficult to pull off. Farce on a low budget, with no actual doors to slam, is even more difficult to pull off. But the talented Queen's Company, an all-female troupe, do more than pull off The Wonder, an early 18th-century farce by Susanna Centlivre. They triumph. The Wonder pivots on young lovers, avaricious fathers, and mistaken identities. As adapted and directed by Rebecca Patterson, it includes pantomime, dancing, and rock music; I particularly enjoyed the use of Cat Stevens' song Father and Son. The entire cast is excellent, and the women playing the men's roles are amusing and convincing. In an interview on nytheatre.com, Patterson said, "if you just cast men in the male roles there is limited opportunity for female actors to act in classical productions—there is no reason why the wealth of talent of our female actors should be denied access to playing the male classical roles." It is sad to contemplate that some of the women in The Wonder will not have the careers they deserve because they don't match some template of gender, looks,weight, and race. May the Queen's Company live long and continue to gift us with their talent.

The Jackie Look

In The Jackie Look, famed performance artist Karen Finley plays an angry, bitter version of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, back from the dead. (Jackie doesn't overtly mention that she knows she's dead, but it's clear she does.) Using projected photographs and visits to relevant websites, this Jackie offers a presentation on how the media--and the public--fed on her fame and the frequent tragedies she suffered, while ignoring her actual accomplishments. Finley's point is legitimate, but not new or remarkable, and while she provides some deeply emotional moments, the piece is overlong and disjointed. The most interesting parts of the evening, for me, were the sections that she read from pages on music stands, but she zipped through them so quickly and awkwardly that it was hard to digest her words. Fewer words, more accessibly presented, would have been more powerful. I also think that Finley is arguably guilty of the exact sin she's finding in others--using Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for her own ends.

Palestine

Najla Saïd lives in multiple, sometimes warring, cultures. In her insightful, compassionate one-woman show Palestine, she shares her coming-of-age story, evolving from Upper West Side princess to proud Arab-American. Saïd has a big heart, a sharp mind, and a wry sense of the absurd. The show clocks in at 100 minutes, and could use some trimming; Saïd just doesn't have the skill to remain consistently compelling and engaging for that long (few humans do!) , and the choppy blocking and odd lighting (which often throws distracting shadows on her face), do not help.

Blind

A baffling stylistic departure for playwright Craig Wright in which the ancient Oedipus tragedy is given a modern-times revision, Blind is an unfortunately weak and consistently uninvolving 80 minute one-act that feels far longer. We watch Oedipus (Seth Numrich) and his wife-mother Jocasta (Veanne Cox) arguing in their bedroom, mostly with accusations that the other knew they were blood-related before they hooked up. The atmosphere should be tortured and intense but Wright's dialogue, an awkward and deadly serious mix of the modern and the faux-ancient, keeps getting stuck in the actors' mouths and tripping them up. It's not clear why Wright decided to take Oedipus on in the first place - putting the story in a modern setting doesn't add anything to it and strips it of its gravitas. Cox spends a good deal of time on the floor propped up by one arm as Numrich stands over her going on, and on, with complaints - Wright has reduced Oedipus to a wearying lightweight and Jocasta, for most of the play, to a doormat. The two actors are at least in the same play; Danielle Slavick, who occasionally intrudes as a servant, is in a different one altogether.

Yank!

photo: Carol Rosegg

A gay love story between two WW2 servicemen told in the style of an old-fashioned romantic musical, the Zellnik brothers' Yank! is a rarity indeed: an unabashedly emotional, enormously entertaining throwback that packs contemporary punch. Powered by a savvy book and a delightful score that summons the 40's without sounding by-the-numbers, the musical succeeds at paying homage to the musical theatre of the period while employing its conventions to tell a story that could not be told at the time it's set. (It's somewhat analogous, although not as formally rigid, to what Todd Haynes achieved with his film Far From Heaven.) The story, gently and effectively framed by modern-day narration, centers on the wartime romance between young private Stu (Bobby Steggert, nothing short of astonishing) and his Hollywood-handsome squadmate Mitch (Ivan Hernandez) whose love dare not initially speak its name for reasons both societal and personal. The musical charts their attraction toward each other and its consequences, allowing Stu a convincing and powerfully portrayed trajectory from insecure, emotionally isolated kid to self-respecting, gay-identified adult. There's certainly a take-away socio-political message, but Yank! is first and foremost a nifty, enjoyable entertainment. Great levity is provided by Jeffry Denman (also responsible for the show's snappy choreography), who is exceptional as an Army journalist who mentors Stu in the codes of conduct of gay subculture; further support comes from the cast's lone female Nancy Anderson, who shines in a variety of 40's-style songs.

Blind

In Greek tragedies, the juicy stuff happens off-stage, and then someone tells us about it. But what really happens? Can the storytellers be trusted? In Blind, Craig Wright explores perhaps the juiciest off-stage scene of all: Oedipus and Jocasta facing the fact that they are son and mother. Setting the play in contemporary times (cell phones figure prominently), Wright gives us much that is interesting and thought-provoking but also, unfortunately, much that sets the audience tittering (when the blind Oedipus tries desperately to dial a number on his cell phone, it is hard not to guffaw). Wright's dialogue is frequently overdone; the characters talk a lot in language that I can only think to call high-falutin'. Sometimes it works--Oedipus and Jocasta should be different than--larger than--life, but some pruning wouldn't hurt. Lucie Tiberghien's direction has strengths (she smartly chooses to have the characters talk like people instead of intoning their lines) and weaknesses (Oedipus's blocking once he's blind brings to mind a kid peeking through a blindfold). Veanne Cox and Seth Numrich give valiant, exhausting performances; Danielle Slavick is not able to make much out of her underdeveloped character. While there is much wrong with Blind (sadly, more than is right), I'm glad I saw it---watching talented people take chances is one of the glories of theatre.

Broadway Musicals By The Year 1927

photos: Maryann Lopinto

I'd never been to one of the Broadway By The Year revues at Town Hall before. After seeing this latest edition, which kicked off the tenth year of the series, I'm suitably ashamed. Are these shows always as elegantly presented and as thrillingly performed? Is there always as captivating a mix of ballads, comedy songs, and dance pieces? If so, I've been missing out on the most polished, most enjoyable Broadway concerts in town.

The concept of the series is to spotlight Broadway numbers from a particular calendar year (1927 this time, when more than 200 shows opened on Broadway according to our warm, welcoming host/producer Scott Siegel). This was the year of the watershed musical Show Boat, represented in this revue by 6 numbers from a gorgeous, "unplugged" (unamplified) performance of "You Are Love" (Alexander Gemignani and Kate Baldwin) to a lovely take on "Make Believe" (sung by Ragtime revival castmates Quentin Earl Darrington and Christiane Noll). The Show Boat highlights were undoubtedly "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", sung with great feeling and superb skill by new cabaret sensation Carole Bufford, and "Bill", nothing short of sublime as sung by Baldwin. Only "Ol' Man River" disappointed in comparison with Darrington, otherwise splendid all evening, too heavy-handed.

Besides other American Songbook standards that first appeared in 1927's Broadway shows - for instance "S'Wonderful" (charmingly put over by Bobby Steggert), "My Blue Heaven" (Chad Kimball), and the title song from Funny Face (a delightful duet for Bufford and Christopher Fitzgerald) - there were a couple of little-known gems, such as the yearning, lilting ballad "Just A Memory" from Manhattan Mary, flawlessly delivered by Fitzgerald. An essential component of the Broadway By The Year shows, I've come to learn, is the inclusion of dance numbers. Here, Jeffry Denman and Noah Racey totally killed with the Gene Kelly-Fred Astaire tap duet "The Babbitt and the Bromide" from Funny Face. Another dance highlight: Kendrick Jones and Melinda Sullivan paired up for "The Varisty Drag" from Good News. Throughout all this variety, Ross Patterson leads his versatile Little Big Band combo with unerring taste and sensitivity.



One of the revue's great joys is the chance to see the performers of today so convincingly slip into and sell the styles of yesteryear, including operetta (Ron Bohmer, sensational with a piece from The White Eagle and novelty vaudeville numbers (Marc Kudisch, bringing impeccable comedic timing and musical skill to "She Don't Wanna" from The Ziegfeld Follies of 1927). He and Denman, each with a ukulele, had all of Town Hall in their pocket with their fun take on "He Loves and She Loves" from Funny Face. Sign me up to see their club act should they ever reprise it. And definitely put me down for more Broadway By The Year - one shot, and I'm hopelessly hooked.

Mr. and Mrs. Fitch

photo: Joan Marcus

Intermittently funny and often annoying, Douglas Carter Beane's latest contemporary comedy of manners explores the lengths to which people will go in order to stay famous. The titular couple (John Lithgow and Jennifer Ehle) are a pair of married gossip columnists who haven't had a major scoop in ages; their heard-but-not-seen boss (voiced cantankerously in a series of voice messages by Philip Bosco) is breathing down their necks to either deliver or disappear. Faced with this scenario, what is there to do? Unfortunately, Carter Beane takes what could have been an interesting dissection of journalistic ethics and uses it as nothing more than an excuse for his two stars to trade varying degrees of bon mots for nearly two hours. Some are very funny; others land with a thud, and anyone without a vast repertoire of pop culture allusions will be bored out of their skulls within the first ten minutes. It doesn't help that neither Lithgow nor Ehle is particularly well-cast: he's far too earnest to convince as a bitchy, disillusioned gossipmonger, while she cannot overcome the simple fact that she's not a comedienne. They try valiantly, but there's not a moment when you don't see them sweat.

Clybourne Park

photo: Joan Marcus

The two acts of Bruce Norris' often caustic, provocative comedy take place 50 years apart in the same house. (We've heard of the place already - it's the very one that the Younger family buys in A Raisin In The Sun.) In the stylized first act, set in 1959, "white flight" is about to alter the neighborhood when a superficially sunny homemaker (Christina Kirk, excellent) and her brooding husband (Frank Wood, ditto) pack their things after a personal tragedy. In the second act, set in 2009, the same house has been sold to a white couple (Annie Parisse and Jeremy Shamos, both deliciously transparent) whose plans for the property offend the black neighbors (Crystal A. Dickinson and Damon Gupton, both wonderful and adept at subtext). With wicked humor Norris contrasts the then and now of how we talk about race - in the first act with a veneer of politeness that masks ignorance and bigotry, and in the second act with a veneer of correctness that masks distrust and resentment. By the time the present-day liberal characters sink to sandbox level and start throwing mud at each other (think God of Carnage only smarter and funnier) the oft-outrageous comedy has made its point that the more things change the more things stay the same. What's especially striking about the play, despite what may seem a cynical message about our supposedly post-racial America, is that it's spiked with moments of genuine poignancy. Even its most bracing element, the first act's back story of the white couple's son (Brendan Griffin, precise and detailed), delivers its stinging message with a mournful compassion. Highly recommended.

Clybourne Park

photo: Joan Marcus

Several recent productions have dealt with the always-sensitive issue of race relations in America, but few have been as nuanced and well-constructed as Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park, which opens tonight at Playwrights Horizons. Set in two contrasting eras--segregated 1959 and the supposedly post-racial present--the play navigates the changing dynamics that both mid-century white flight and contemporary gentrification have proferred. In the first act, a white couple (Christina Kirk and Frank Wood) decide to quit their urban neighborhood in the wake of a personal cataclysm. The sale of their house (to an African American family) opens up a can of worms for the rest of the community, who cannot shake their deeply-rooted racism. Fifty years later, the neighborhood is now predominately black, and the plans for a white couple (Annie Parisse and Jeremy Shamos) to level the house that broke the color barrier causes longtime residents to question their sense of society. Norris, riffing well on Lorraine Hansbury's A Raisin in the Sun, manages to capture every aspect of both debates with aplomb; alternately hilarious and heartbreaking, he allows all of the characters to search the depths of their souls and discover things that they might have wanted left untouched. The cast is practically flawless, but special mention goes to Wood, quietly brilliant as a father who cannot overcome a horrific tragedy.

Forgotten

photo: Patrick Redmond

I was surprised by the emotional power and the striking theatricality of this solo show, in which writer-performer Pat Kinevane alternates flawlessly between 4 characters 80 years and older. The people he plays are living out their sunsets in Ireland, but Kinevane has punctuated the piece with some conventions of Japanese theatre. The juxtaposition of more naturalistic monologues with scenes of stylized Eastern movement proves to be both thematically valid and theatrically dynamic; it also frames the collection of stories in a way that allows them to gather a greater emotional resonance than they might on their own. Given the show's title, it's not surprising that the elderly characters are linked by loneliness; what is surprising given the theme is that Kinevane's writing is often as unsentimental as his characterizations are captivating. The piece plays like a ritual to honor the forgotten elderly that does, in fact, truly honor them.

Forgotten

Every now and then you see something truly unique, and Pat Kinevane's one-man show qualifies. A blend of Irish character studies and Japanese Kabuki theater, it is a superb showcase for this exceptionally warm and generous performer. The beauty of the Kabuki movements Mr. Kinevane uses to transition between scenes doesn't seem quite enough to explain their existence, but the happy temptation is to always give this work the benefit of the doubt, swept up as one is in its imaginative evocations of the lives of four aged survivors, now confined to nursing homes. More than a play, it's poetry, and an immersive experience. That's no mean trick for one performer to pull off. Read the full review.

A Lie Of The Mind

Reviewed for Theatermania.

The Pride

In Alexi Kaye Campbell's thoughtful, totally riveting drama we see two stories, one set in 1958 and the other in the present day, which involve the same actors playing same-named but different characters. What joins the alternating stories is that both are about gay love affairs; the playwright contrasts the then and now of gay love in thematically rich and emotionally powerful ways. What is most exciting and provocative about the play is its assertion that gay connotes an identity rather than an activity, and its underlying plea to recognize love rather than sex as the most progressive and most liberating connection between gay men. The play's main argument might seem authoral and the play's structure pretentious in less capable hands but this playwright falls into neither trap; he puts over the ideas while fleshing out believable, absorbing characters to draw us in emotionally. Under Joe Mantello's taut direction, the performances are gripping and truthful. In the 50's-set story as a married man who self-loathes his shameful "deviation", Hugh Dancy is heartbreaking: he has one scene of the "feel one thing, say another" variety that could draw tears from a stone. Ben Whishaw is especially exceptional in the present-day story, fully inhabiting a man whose erotic attraction to shame does damage to his love relationship. The other two performers are also excellent: Andrea Riseborough gives brilliant support completing each story's triangle, alternating between gravity and levity all evening; Adam James is unfailingly spot-on in several minor roles, most notably as a current-day magazine editor calling for a feature story that superficially glorifies anonymous gay hook-ups.

The Pride

The publicity material for The Pride says, "Oliver, Philip, and Sylvia are caught in a kind of erotic time warp. Their complex love triangle, replete with conflicting loyalties and passions, jumps from 1958 to the present and back in a maelstrom of fantasy, repression and rebellion." Okay, I didn't get that. What I saw was a play about two distinct sets of male lovers, one in 1958 and one in the present, and the women in their lives. Yes, the characters had the same names in both time frames, but I interpreted that fact as a way to set up parallel stories. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Either way, The Pride, written by Alexi Kaye Campbell and directed by Joe Mantello, is a strong, moving, insightful investigation of how homophobia destroys people, what love really means, and how difficult it can be to know and accept one's self. While The Pride is in many ways a play of ideas, Campbell avoids any preachiness or artificial structuring. Instead, he gives us a story of believably flawed people stumbling through life, as people often do. The first act is excellent and hard-hitting; the second act is not as well-developed, possibly because being 100% true to the set-up would have been a bit brutal. The cast is well-nigh perfect. Ben Whishaw is somewhat mannered, but it works, and he so totally inhabits the bodies of the two Olivers that you know which one he is by how he stands. Andrea Riseborough, in the sometimes thankless role(s) of Sylvia(s), imbues her/them with a potent inner life and remarkable strength. Hugh Dancy has that amazing ability to devastate with just a movement of his eyes or the slightest tilt of his head. And Adam James, in three supporting roles, perfectly complements the other performers.

Fêtes de la Nuit

Photo: Jill Usdan

Naked Goddess France in a tub, three silent Graces, and a stately tango usher us into the romantic arena of Charles Mee's Paris. To use two appropriately French-derived words, Fêtes de la Nuit is a collage of vignettes on the theme of love, but it's more visceral, and rewarding, than the typical movie of intertwined stories like Valentine's Day. We'll call it a play for want of a better word, but it's more of a theatrical celebration, scene after scene of a richly observed and finely sketched world where romantic love is subject number one, with sex, art, and the character of a great city clustering close behind. Read the full review.