The Black Eyed

Photo Credit/Joan Marcus

New York Theater Workshop is on a roll this season: Horizon was a Beckett-like allegory on religion and faith, and The Black Eyed is a Callaghan-like parable on what will happen to our faiths if we cannot learn to understand one another. Betty Shamieh's play is controversial--it features an unrepentant suicide bomber in the afterlife and has harsh words for martyrdom--but it is written beautifully, with shades of slam poetry and Greek choruses. Though the polemic is passive, the performances are passionate, and Sam Gold's direction serves as supportive punctuation for the finely crafted message already laid bare on stage.

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[Also blogged by: Patrick | David]
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MITF: "The Broken Jump"

OK, so these days, vaudeville really isn't that funny. However, watching actors like Jack Boice ham it up in a flattering homage of the old days; that's comedy. The Broken Jump isn't just a comedy, though, and that's what makes it pretty good, too. King Talent's script tells the story of an elder performer, Julius McGowen (whom he also sagaciously plays) coming to terms with the life he left when he fled the ill-repute of his ex-prostitute lover, Natalie (played by Melissa Jo Talent) to pursue an eventual Broadway act. Fifteen years later, and McGowen's a dying breed who finds a breath of fresh air in Natalie's precocious daughter, Christina Bell (Caitlin Mehner). Unfortunately, his partnership with young Milton Kean (Tony King) is threatened by his big plans for Christina, and by the aggressive politics of conservative Senator Irving Drew (Greg Homison), who'd like to ban children from the inappropriately lascivious messages of "the theater." The show bustles along, building relationships and lovingly embracing the history of vaudeville, and it's not until the abrupt, mood-changing finale that The Broken Jump appears to be broken.

The Black Eyed

photo: Joan Marcus

***
NYTW

I generally agree with Patrick's ("stunningly lyrical") and Aaron's ("finely crafted") Showdown reviews for The Black Eyed. To my recollection, I have never even seen a play solely about Palestinians, female or otherwise, and that reason alone makes this production pretty darn unique. Four Palestinian women, each with their own story loaded with struggle, pain and strife, gather in the afterlife searching for answers (it sort of reminded me of the harrowing 9 Parts Of Desire, the one woman play about Iraqi women from a couple of years ago (jeez can't those poor middle eastern women catch a break??)). My one quib, which is admittedly a shallow one, is that shortly into the play it became obvious that each woman was going to have her 2o minute platform to tell her story and the predictability of this structure was noticeably taxing on a few of the matinee subscribers as well as my ADHD self.

The Day Before Spring

I'm fairly sure I am not the target audience for the popular Musicals In Mufti series at the York. While I don't mind watching an open-book, minimally staged reading of a dated, antique musical, I need the compensatory pleasures of a great score. (That a score is merely obscure or recently rescued - as this one was, per the Times article a couple of days ago - is not enough to ring my bell, although there is obviously an appreciative audience that goes ding-dong-ding for this.) While it was fun to see Hunter Bell steal a scene or two, and the cast was thick with good singers, I decided to make my exit at intermission: none of the Lerner and Loewe songs in the first act, excepting the lilting title song, did anything for me. Also, the show's story crawled so slowly that my mind wandered from the stage to the fancy people in the audience: How does Barrett Foa get his teeth so white? Is Jeff Bowen wearing the same sandals as in this iconic pic? Where can I get the shampoo and conditioner that Susan Blackwell uses?

The Day Before Spring

Mufti
Left at intermish.


This was a minimally staged, script-in-hand performance of a previously "lost" musical written very early in Lerner and Lowe's careers. This was perfect for those hardcore Lerner and Loewe fans who have a special interest in mapping the artistic evolution of these old school collaborators. Unfortunately, I am not one of those types of fans and I think perhaps Mufti may have reached too deep into that old dusty trunk as they retrieved a forgettably forgettable score. Sometimes musicals are lost for a reason.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

****1/2

Broadway

The unfortunate inevitability of most long-runs on Broadway is that with new actors migrating in and out it becomes a crap shoot from role to role as to whether or not we're going to get a character as three dimensional and unique as we did with the carefully selected original cast. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't and this production of Spelling Bee, now it its 3rd year, is no different. The good news is that here it just didn't seem to matter as much. This book and score are just so unabashedly charming and joyful that in spite of the forgivable loss of a little bit of nuance and clarity of character, I still found myself laughing hysterically at, and emotionally investing in, the aspirations of these needy little spellers. I always cry like a stupid fucking baby during "The I Love You Song" and at this performance I reacted no different. Take your mom to this show, she'll love it.