Pygmalion

Photo/Joan Marcus

David Grindley is following on the heels of Journey's End with another excellent revival, Pygmalion. And while the focus has changed from crass war to high etiquette, the shows have much in common: save for a wide-open scene that's inaudibly set in the middle of a rainstorm, Jonathan Fensom's sliding shoebox sets are as claustrophobic as ever and, thanks to Jason Taylor's lighting, either dimly lit (in Mr. Higgins's study) or blindingly bright (his mother's drawing room). Not to mention returning stars Jefferson Mays and Boyd Gaines, who play the intellectual naifs who tamper so unwittingly with a young woman's character and soul. Mays is the ideal choice to play this dialectic and didactic dialect coach, given his strong TONY winning performance in I Am My Own Wife, and Gaines (as in Gypsy, earlier this year) provides an upright balance for that petulant youth. Claire Daines is in tough company, but she acquits herself well -- I only wish that her accents didn't seem to stifle her physical freedom. The far better example of cockney transformation comes from Doolittle's moralizing father, played here by Jay O. Sanders (the exaggeratedly straight man, as he was in A Midsummer Night's Dream). The production really makes the most of Shaw's use of language, especially given such hummers of lines like "What is life but a series of inspired follies?" or "Do any of us understand what we're doing? If we did, would we do it?" Grindley's direction makes for a realized life that is inspired (but not folly), and one need only look closely at Mays's flash of realization at the close of the play to see how true it is that we never truly understand ourselves.

Spain

A wife, recently dumped for someone younger with a boob job, seems to conjure up and romanticize a genuine Spanish conquistador in her suburban living room. The tales of his bloody exploits inspire her and she takes up his sword for her own act of violence...or does she? The play - which is meant to be zany and comic but isn't paced swiftly enough to hit those marks (at least not yet; I saw an early preview) - is the kind that keeps pulling the rug out from under us: something happens, then we find out it didn't, then we find out that something else happened, and so on. By the time we find out what *really* happened (at the very end of the play) I'd lost interest. The first few scenes are striking, however, and promise a more engaging and entertaining play than Spain turns out to ultimately be. As the conquistador, Michael Aronov is larger-than-life fun, and as our heroine's best friend, Veanne Cox gets a lot of mileage out of her distinctive line readings. In the central role, Annabella Sciorra gives a credible performance and radiates warmth as always, but I can't help but feel that a more comic-neurotic character actress would better serve this play.

David liked Spain more than I did and called it "recommendable", but we both applaud these discount ticket initiatives from MCC:
$20 UNDER 30!
$20 tickets are available to patrons under 30, beginning two hours before curtain.
One ticket per valid ID, cash only, subject to availability.
Additionally, MCC has a $15 STUDENT RUSH available 20 minutes before curtain.

The Overwhelming

Photo/Joan Marcus

J. T. Rogers hasn't just written an excellent dramatic and political play about the swift, mass genocide in Rwanda, 1994, he's managed to match the calm-of-the-storm tone up to what he describe as Rwanda's "vertiginous dichotomy." By purposefully double casting Boris McGiver and Owiso Odera in opposing roles, the similarities between Hutu and Tutsi are even more emphatic, and the politics are even more facile. (McGiver plays a snooty French diplomat and a snubbed South African NGO worker, Odera represents both the impassive Rwandan police and the helpless UN major there to "maintain order"). Other actors are simply strong at coloring their parts: James Rebhorn is an excellent embassy official, as convincingly aloof and pension-oriented as he is genuinely disconcerted and frustrated later on, and Charles Parnell makes for an awfully charismatic government spokesperson . . . until his specific politics are made quite clear. Beyond the politics, there's also equal care and thought given to the personalities of the American family caught in the middle of this all, and their plight is what transforms the show from mouthpiece to actual drama. All these layers might sound confusing, but Rogers has an elegant, naturally ebullient way of telling the story, as easily eliding from one scene to the next as he switches from language to language. It's a subtle and smooth immersion, and unlike Hotel Rwanda, it does the whole thing without establishing any heroes. The only spot that troubled me was Max Stafford-Clark's direction, which seemed to keep overemphasizing scenes and themes (is a pile of skulls really necessary?) that had already been more efficiently thrust into the periphery.

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Hoodoo Love

photo: Jaisen Crockett

We're in the dirt-poor backwaters of Memphis in the 1930's for this vibrantly written, instantly absorbing tale of a desperate young woman who casts a spell on her lover to keep him from straying. Whether or not more good than bad comes from that is ultimately up to us to decide. The four character play, written by a sensationally talented 26 year old playwright named Katori Hall, has a lively narrative and colorful, crisp (and often coarse) dialogue that practically sings when it's spoken: when each of the lovers actually sings the blues (their original songs are also by the playwright) it feels like the natural progression of what we've been hearing. As a slice-of-life drama, the play is superbly detailed and convincing: I got immediately caught up in the world of superstitions and beliefs that it depicts and (also thanks to a flawless cast) in each of the characters. I have to admit that I found the play's too-tidy epilogue dissatisfying, but that is the only complaint I can come up with for what is otherwise a transporting and highly engaging play. Recommended.

Philoktetes

Photo/Paula Court

I loawethed Philoktetes, which is to say that John Jesurun's production, premiering at Soho Rep 14 years after it was written, sent me into a simultaneous spasm of awe and loathing. Awe because Jesurun simply writes engaging poetry: seething rants of verse-cum-curse that come in waves of a playful prosody that sustains long thoughts in short sentences bedazzled by common patois and modern jargon ("His head hit a bullet. Habeus corpus, a talking corpse.") Loathing because Jesurun's fanciful production seems as lost at sea as the roundabout, nothing-for-granted script: his twin screens project images above the center of the stage and on the floor itself, but this eerie superimposition of natural disasters (cyclones, thunderstorms) or calm visual "white noise" (rain-flecked water) doesn't connect with the rambling text. The quiet restraint that the actors achieve, flawlessly expressing such troubled thoughts even while tied to carefully choreographed movements (or stillnesses) on a flickering set, is a credit to them, particularly Louis Cancelmi (as Philoktetes). But the ultimate dissonance of each scene begs for this show to be explored at one's own leisure, not subjected to in this dizzying experience.

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Moving Shortly

A workshop production from a young company called Common Thread (which includes a couple of friends), this one-act takes place in real time on a stalled subway car. This is the group's inaugaral production, not open for review, but I am going to say that I'm looking forward to their next: a bold revision of Hansel And Gretel which should be up in the Spring of next year.