Walmartopia

*

Minetta Lane Theatre

In one corner we have the sincere, heartfelt struggle of a mother and daughter futilely trying to make ends meet on their paltry Wal-Mart wages. In the other corner we have a wacky, fey scientist who has built a time machine and is and toting around the disembodied head of Sam Walton. When these two worlds collide it is jarring and stupefying as our proud, ballad-singing mother/daughter team are manhandled by goofy Wal-mart cronies and tossed into a time machine. It's Norma Rae meets Spaceballs. Wal-Mart is EVIL with a capital "E!!" seems to be the unsubtle point they are making here but with their poorly juxtaposed, puerile plot and generic ditties not much else is conveyed except for the ever increasing desperation to make the audience guffaw at this cloying mess. In the end it was condescending, insulting to our intelligence and reminiscent of poorly conceived children's theater.

The Misanthrope

****1/2
New York Theater Workshop
Photo: Joan Marcus


BALLS OUT! Simply put, that is director Ivo Van Hove's M.O. as he reimagines Molière's The Misanthrope for the stage. Currently in previews at NYTW, Ivo does not offer us the traditional but instead heads straight to the emotional gut of this 1666 masterpiece and literally shines a fluorescent light on all the rage and jealousy exploding in this play. Check out the production photos. Does that look like a Molière to you?? Hell no, but I've never understood The Misanthrope more clearly than I did here. Bill Camp, pictured, is already giving an astounding performance as the people hating douchebag who can't keep his mouth shut and the rest of the top notch cast fits right into this ultra modern ketchup-splattered world. I am now upset with mystupidself for missing Ivo's reimaginings of A Streetcar Named Desire and Hedda Gabler. I will not be so foolish as to miss whatever play he fucks with next.


Also blogged by: [Aaron]

Six Degrees of Separation

Photo/Jennifer Maufrais

The heart of this revival of Six Degrees of Separation still beats strong, but it's clogged by some odd directorial choices that add absurdism to the opening, and prolong the farce too far into the drama. Some uneven acting (in a cast of 17) doesn't really help, and the play winds up a tame, pleasant production, rather than a sharp glimpse at our anonymous lives. Tom Wojtunik's direction is just a little too overzealous at times: he clearly knows how to focus the action (as with the spotlit asides) and the actors are never so open as when discussing loves like Kandinsky or Catcher in the Rye, but he seems to get overwhelmed by all the things happening. As a result, many of the characters--the children, detectives, Dr. Fine, and friends of the family--are awash in generic choices, which for a show that in part is about the death of imagination, makes the play less affecting than it should be. The center, Laura Heidinger's Ouisa and Richard Rioleau's Paul, have great moments together, but the big breakdown at the end is kept at a seventh degree of separation because of Wojtunik's choice to place phone callers in a recessed black box. Break the box: we must be more than anecdotal jukeboxes, and must not lose the experience.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: Patrick]

Ivo Van Hove's "The Misanthrope"

Photo/Joan Marcus

Now that The Misanthrope has opened, let me make perfectly clear that you must see this play. For all the surprises, excitement, and graphic imagery that Ivo Van Hove has managed to cram into this revival of a solid Moliere "comedy," it'd be a crime for me to really spoil the effects, so don't read my review unless you've seen the play first. Trust me: it's a raw experience, well worth your time. It's overwhelmingly visceral (you'll smell it), astonishingly animal (you'll recoil or lean into it), and flawlessly acted (the things actors will do for their craft). Pay close attention to Bill Camp and Jeanine Serralles (it won't be hard with Tal Yarden's video design, or Jan Versweyveld's self-reflective set), as they're really defining these roles . . . and rhyming couplets to boot (Tony Harrison's acerbic 1973 translation). This is a rare all-in-one theatrical work that more than revives: it resurrects.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: David]

The Boy In The Bathroom

This new, affecting three-person chamber musical (at NYMF) centers on an obsessive-compulsive disordered "boy" (played by Michael Zahler) who's locked himself in the bathroom for over a year. He won't come out of his safe, tiled womb even when his Mom (Mary Stout) breaks her hip in a fall, nor when Mom's hired helper (Ana Nogueira) flirts with him from the other side of the bathroom door. While the situation is ocassionally tickled for a laugh or two, for the most part the young man's problem is treated with seriousness and rendered with credible detail: one of the first songs lists the flat foods that Mom has learned will pass through the crack under the door to the bathroom. The musical score is purposefully restrained, sometimes deliberately atonal and has integrity: the musical is appropriately less like a show with musical numbers and more like one with dramatic musical passages. Some clunky lyrics here and there are forgiven, as the score is effective and accomplished: one piece in particular, in which each of the three characters introspects about the want for fresh air, best demonstrates the lyricism that this story gains through musicalization. The underlying causes of the young man's phobias are only lightly touched on, which is as it should be, allowing the boy's isolation to have a more universal resonance. All three characters are well-defined and exceedingly well portrayed: Stout is formidable as always, and squeezes all the dramatic juice out of an eleventh-hour musical monologue that makes plain her character's compulsions; Nogueira very clearly and very winningly articulates her character's relationship with the boy, which begins with curiousity and a little hostility but eventually grows into something deeper. But the show finally belongs to Zahler, who projects both an intense vulnerability and a strong willfullness as the fear-driven boy of the title. He's touching without being cloying. As is the show.

Bernice Bobs Her Mullet

This musicalization (at NYMF) of the F. Scott Fitzgerald story resets the tale in current times and stamps out all nuance: Bernice isn't just small-town anymore, now she's a barefoot mullet-headed hillbilly, and her big city debutante cousin now comes off like a Legally Blonde-aged Glinda. The story (especially a fire and brimstone preacher who thinks that short hair on a female tempts eternal damnation) doesn't make much sense or have much distinction when set in the current-day, and nearly everything thrown in to otherwise modernize it feels been-there-done-that. However, the show isn't boring (thanks to the terrific, lively ensemble) and there is a stretch in the middle (thanks to a couple of songs that are a cut above the others in the score) when it's amiable and fun. (A hand-clappin' gospel number, led by Jeff Hiller, is the show's highlight) It's been cast flawlessly: everyone is perfectly matched to their roles, and if the romantic leads are less memorable than everyone else, I blame it on their material.