Dream of a Common Language

I think Heather McDonald's artistic play Dream of a Common Language is too involved in the words and the beauty of intellectual discussion to succeed as a drama. But it generates a lot of good discussion about the position of women in the 1873 art world. McDonald hits upon a lot of provocative anecdotes, even if the scenes themselves are often flatly acted, and although Karen Sommers' direction is often distracting (live music to underscore monologues), the show itself feels very smooth. There's not much to rant about--this is too intellectual for passion--but there are enough good moments to make this play worth talking about.

[Read on]

Murder Uncensored

A part of the Gay Plays series, Murder Uncensored is billed as a "steamy gay film-noir thriller based on the sensational unsolved murder of silent film director William Desmond Taylor". Wings is committed to producing as much gay theater as they can which I think is a very good thing though I can't say that this play was perhaps the best choice. More of a screenplay than a theater piece, the location hopping and need for period costuming and scenery was a little more than Wing's humble company could adequately fulfill. And though it's respectable that playwright George Barthel's mission is to excavate gay history, the pandering twist at the end of Act One was borderline offensive and had me heading for the exit at intermission.

Essential Self-Defense

photo: Joan Marcus

I have six shows that need to be blogged but the others can wait: Adam Rapp's new play, currently at Playwrights, is all kinds of fresh and fascinating, a sensationally unique comedy that flirts with absurdism and whimsy while always grounded in a dark vision of (perhaps especially American) fears and anxieties. The core story may sound like something we'd expect from Rapp - a fearful, seemingly traumatized woman inches closer to the profoundly paranoid and potentially dangerous loner who works as a tackle dummy in her self-defense class - but what we don't expect is how Rapp holds onto the gravity of what's fear-based and dire in his material while pitching it for offbeat comedy, with flashes of David Lynch-like deadpan, Christopher Durang-like satire, even the false cheer of especially sad Dennis Potter musical numbers. I saw an early preview, but the play is already tight and all the performances are already on the same page of quirky heightenedness: there's no reason I can think of not to see this sooner rather than later.

Also blogged by: [David]

A more in-depth review at New Theater Corps.

Mamma Mia!

**
Winter Garden



Wish Patrick a happy birthday! Determined to attend a matinee together we scoured the discount ticket sites attempting to find something that we could both count towards our race. He had seen pretty much everything on Broadway so it was a difficult search. That is when, at the last minute, the unthinkable happened: two tickets to Mamma Mia!. It is now official: I am a theater snob. There we sat arms folded scouring at the ten tons of splenda being lobbed into our faces as the Europeans around us squealed with glee. Years ago (like maybe 7th grade), I would have been dancing in the aisles along side them, however, somewhere along the way I became this horrible curmudgeon who prefers depth and relevance. West Side Story opened at the Winter Garden ya know... sigh...

Mamma Mia!

photo: Joan Marcus

The insipid, sub-sitcom jukebox musical Mamma Mia! is set in Greece, the birthplace of drama. That's what I call "irony".

365 Days/365 Plays: Week #18

From the get-go, I said that Susan Lori-Parks' 365 Days/365 Plays was an attention-seeking stunt that would never amount to anything. I don't care how many awards you've won: it takes more than a day to write a play. Sure enough, I'm correct. What Lori-Parks has done is to write a series of vignettes, and I only attended tonight's free performance because it was done by the New York Neo-Futurists, who pretty much do the same thing every week at Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. I was mildly entertained by how the troupe managed to bring their own experimental group direction into the piece, and by the way they maintained their refusal to play anything other than themselves. But the seven plays they performed, along with three "constants," were just plain bad. Surrealistic and devoid of emotion, not to mention plagued with some technical difficulties, I hope that audiences are still willing to check out TMLMTBGB despite this wacky one-night stand.