A Moon For The Misbegotten

****
Brooks Atkinson

Having never seen or read Moon... before, I did not have the same vantage point as many of the prominent, NY critics, many of whom had issues with this revival. I fell in love with this on-the-verge-of-imploding wasteland of a play and thought the production was pretty darned top notch. The nuanced, sarcastic, carefully-sloppy performance given by Kevin Spacey as the legendary, comfortably drunk son of the Tyrones from Long Days Journey... often made me shudder and hide my eyes in shame and sympathy. The superb Eve Best, playing the original Pirate Queen, passionately and violently stomped down the clay-floor of this dirty-brown set making a bed for the poor alcoholic whom she desperately wanted to mother. I LOVED this play. They just don't make `em like used to.

Also blogged by: [Patrick] [Christopher]

Topsy Turvy Mouse

Topsy Turvy Mouse is a show in development through the Cherry Lane Mentor Project, which I greatly admire and respect, so please take the following with a grain of industrial salt. Peter Gil-Sheridan's script, which has apparently won a few awards that I've never heard of, appears to have been selected because of its political edge: the play fast-forwards fifteen years into the future so that we can see what has happened to the two smiling soldiers of the now infamous Abu Ghraib pictures. However, that idea has no teeth, and the problem with the play is that there isn't a single thing in it that's topsy, or turvy. It's just quiet, like a mouse.

[Read on]

A Moon For The Misbegotten

photo: Alastair Muir

In this engrossing but less than ideal production (transferred from the Old Vic) of O'Neill's three-hour drama, Kevin Spacey plays James Tyrone as an explosive drunk rather than a corrosive one: he's never far from a sudden rageful eruption. It's a new and interesting approach to the role - its freshness is entertaining, it adds some oomph to the ocassional comic moments, and it gets points for not being stamped by Jason Robards - but often it's too vital for the "walking corpse" that O'Neill describes. Eve Best isn't maternal in the way that previous actresses have been as Josie, nor is she a "big cow" of a woman. But if you can accept that, she's captivating: she renders the entire range from hard-boozin' coarseness to soul-bared tenderness in vivid detail. Colm Meaney is exactly right as Josie's father - gruff, mischievious, proud - but essentially this Moon rises or falls on the star performances of Spacey and Best. It just barely clears the horizon line.

Also blogged by: [David]

you have only three weeks left to see DYING CITY...

...before it ends its run at Lincoln Center on April 29th. David and I both thumbs-upped this play when we saw it in previews but you don't have to look hard for other strongly positive responses: in his review for the Observer, John Halipern called it "the finest new American play I've seen in a long while", and Mark Armstrong at Mr. Excitement hails it as a "victory for the timeslessness of great drama". Even the Times raved and said you should see it. What are you waiting for, a discount code?

Go to broadwayoffers and use code DC45LCT for $45 tickets. Don't wait, because as this gripping (Andy Propst, American Theater Web) and excellent (LudlowLad, Off-Off Blogway) new play of substance finishes out its limited run, you won't be the only one who's suddenly scrambling to see it.

With a student I.D., you can get up to two tickets for $10 each. You can even do it right now, online. At broadwayoffers use code DC4TONY for advance student tickets and just bring the I.D. with you when you collect the tickets at the box office.

Ringling Bros And Barnum & Bailey Circus

Yes, this is theater. It counts. First and foremost: Do you realize that cotton candy now costs $12 dollars?? Their justification is that they're now presenting the cotton candy in a wearable top hat. The sweatshop penny hat was made of this weird, unsettling amalgam of polyester and cardboard and the cotton candy tasted like cheap pancake syrup. Humbug! As for the circus, it was pretty much the same thing I remembered the last time I went which was about 20 years ago. The tightrope, trapeze, sweaty clowns, sway poles, animal acts weren't very interesting to me but the kids in the vicinity were foaming at the mouth with glee which I spoze is what it's all about. So the animals: I'm reasonably sure that they are treated humanely and lead generally comfortable lives but having a tiger sit! stay! roll over! like a dog or having horses running dizzily around in circles for 10 minutes straight greatly diminishes the majesty of these animals and I hope that we as a culture are moving beyond being captivated by that.

Picasso At The Lapin Agile

photo: Rod Goodman

Steve Martin's absurdist comedy, which imagines a night early in the twentieth century when Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso cross paths in a Parisian bar, is a lively mix of high wit and low humour: the two men might be off and running with musings on the nature of genius one minute, and the next they're locked in a Wild West-style showdown with their pencils instead of guns. (That ends in a draw, naturally). Despite some of the witty intellectual sparring the play isn't (and doesn't want to go) much deeper than a tickle, but at least it's a smart, invigorating one. This production, at T. Schreiber Studio, is too leisurely-paced to bring off the play's zaniest flights of fancy, but that's really the harshest thing I can say against it: it's otherwise a pleasure: effectively staged, beautifully designed (George Alison deserves special mention for his evocative and detailed set of the turn of the century bar room) and winningly performed.

Also blogged by: [Aaron] and [David]