LoveMusik

The second preview of this new Hal Prince-directed musical, which travels the arc of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya's relationship using his songs, nearly hit the three hour mark. That's at least an hour too long for what it is, which is slight and dramatically static: we clearly see what's the matter with their love in the first fifteen minutes (she won't acknowledge that she loves him, and in sadness he returns the favor) and, although this or that event comes along to keep things lively, nothing tangible happens until the last fifteen minutes to raise the stakes. This is not a plot so much as it's a situation. I'm going to go back next week to see the show in tighter shape - I have to believe there will be cuts - and until then I only want to add that Michael Cerveris is all aching and longing as Weill; he delivers his intimate solo numbers ("That's Him" and "It Never Was You" in particular) with beautifully restrained emotion.

Neal Medlyn's Coming In The Air Tonight

****

Galapagos

You're not going to find shit like this anywhere else. This impassioned tribute to the music of Phil Collins has downtown comic personality Neal Medlyn once again stripped down to his underwear and covered in blood (this happens to him a lot). Lovingly screaming out the lyrics he and his best friend, Carmine Covelli (intermittently confined to a wheelchair) provide their own unique take on the songbook via erratic vaguely choreographed movement about the space. There are no traditional punchlines in this show. The comedy lies in the reckless earnestness of his delivery or the desperate fumbling to locate a prop. At one point he invited an audience member to join him saying "Will you come up onstage and pretend to care about me?". They did and they did.

Committed

Photo/G. Roeker

I have no idea how the three one-acts in Committed are supposed to connect with each other. Every play is about relationships, but then again . . . every play is about relationships. That's what people go to the theater for. Living Image Arts (LIA) has missed their mark with this production: it's nice to foster diverse and distinctive voices, it's no good if they've got nothing to say (that is, if it's not "compelling and innovative" or "living and relevant"). To be fair, I don't see how you can do either of those quotable things in a stylized comedy like "Off the Cuff" or how you make something as cute and bland as "Men Are Pigs" anything more than the short and sweet joke it is. "Boxes," which is a sharp, smart, poignant piece by Robert Askins, is put off by a lulling monotony between the two actors (who are all brogue and no brash), so even the success of the night comes with a grain of salt. But hey, writing theater's hard: you have to be committed, in both meanings of the word, to really make it work.

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]