The Turn of the Screw

Photo/Wandrille Moussel

One of the best things about a ghost story should be the lighting, and thankfully I have nothing but praise for Karl Chmielewski's thick-shadowed design in Jeffrey Hatcher's stage adaptation of The Turn of the Screw. But unfortunately, I have nothing else positive to say about this Wake Up, Marconi! production: Don K. Williams allows the actors to prance about the stage with broad strokes and as a result never gets anywhere near the specific tension that Henry James's novel tried to conjure up with symbolic ghosts and unreliable narration. It's not an easy adaptation to do, especially since "The Man" (Steve Cook) plays everything from an old maid to a precocious child, but it's made worse by adding verbalized sound effects (whispered footfalls and creaks). The script has some merits to it -- the dialogue it has added to James's rambling text is, at times, punchy -- but delivered as it is by a creepy Cook and his overdone counterpart, Melissa Pinsly, it's hard to see the ghost story as anything other than a comedy.

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Things We Want

photo: Monique Carboni

I have nothing but praise for the ensemble of this current production from The New Group: all four actors, under Ethan Hawke's able direction, give natural and vibrant performances. (And Zoe Kazan, the lone female in the group, is by now enough of a reason to see anything she's in: she's easily one of the best and brightest young actors of today.) But the play, despite some snappy dialogue, too often smacks of contrivance: the first act concludes with an exchange between Kazan and Paul Dano that is meant to convincingly move their characters' relationship from strangers to something else, and the fact that it doesn't convince can only be blamed on the playwrighting.

Macbeth

photo: Ken Howard

The Met Opera has been on such a roll with their most recent new productions that a bummer was bound to happen sooner or later, and here it is with Adrian Noble's staging of Verdi's Macbeth. The production means to set the story in post WW2 Europe, but the conceit never takes hold thanks to inconsistent visual design. Worse, Noble seems to follow every good idea with a bad one: the moments of simple and effective theatricality (for instance there's a neat effect with a banner during the banquet scene) are ultimately undone by the more common moments of counterproductive theatrical business (for instance, Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene happens here on chairs that her attendants keep rearranging so that she doesn't fall: while that may make some poetic sense, it dillutes the scene's dramatic impact). When the beleagured people congregate in the last act to rise up in rebellion, there's a minute of some Les Miserables-like scampering forward before everyone is lined up downstage in bland formation, way too common an occurence in this production. Of course, strong performances could overcome a mediocore presentation like this one, but despite James Levine's tight, tense conducting in the pit, this Macbeth was musically problematic. Cursed with the mismatch of a sometimes vocally underpowered and underplaying Zeljko Lucic in the lead role, and a histronic, screechy overacting Maria Guleghina as Lady Macbeth, the loudest applause at this performance was for Macduff (Dimitri Pittas).

Fuerzabruta

Photo/Fuerzabruta Press

I went to Fuerzabruta expecting to be titillated, amazed, and yes, frightened: brute force, when exercised properly, does all that. Unfortunately, while the show (by Diqui James, a co-founder of De La Guarda) is wildly inventive, it's pretty tame, more a vivid expo (it's even set in a cavernous space, amidst a self-made mob of people) than a finished product. There are moments that will take your breath away, as when what is essentially an gigantic adult Slip 'n' Slide is lowered to just inches from the audience's heads, leaving them to gently brush against its playful dryads. Or when a giant kite with rock-climbing footholds is spun around violently by the fearless stagehands, making the two performers pinned to it seem trapped in a tornado. Or the appeal of watching two dancers cartwheel vertically across a shimmering plastic wall (which assumes both that you find that appealing and that you haven't seen that trick before). These events are loosely tied together by a lot of screaming, dancing, and raving, but these moments grow repetitious and far too forced and artificial. Nothing develops naturally because there isn't actually a story to tell: instead, there's just an increasingly desperate attempt to make a mountain out of a molehill (a really, really technically impressive molehill). While watching our nameless hero run yet again on a giant treadmill rolling its way into the middle of the audience, I found myself paying more attention to the young man next to me who, wide-eyed and gripping his girlfriend for balance, was quite obviously on something far more potent than I. For all that there were high powered fans spinning in my direction, I was far from blown away by anything other than the engaging use of the crowd itself to make a variety of pictures on the stage.

Hoodoo Love

Preview; Opens 11/1.

Photo/Jaisen Crockett - Art Meets Commerce

A big smile came to my face when grandmotherly Candy Lady turned out to be full of sugar, talking about how menstruating into a man's coffee is the best way to keep him from going anywhere. That kind of brash writing is not just clever, it's illuminating and sharp. But the downside to Katori Hall's evocative script is that the plot isn't at all provocative: the climaxes are telegraphed (one might even say that they're faked) and the story itself, despite dealing with hoodoo and being set in 1930's Memphis, isn't anything special. So far as presentation goes, Hall is at her best when building up to the storm, writing some terse moments into otherwise innocuous scenes, as when Ace of Spades, the blues singer bewitched by conjuror Candy Lady into falling in love with the not-so-innocent-just-naive Toulou, confronts Toulou's older brother, Jib, over a game of two-handed spades. The poison in the flask that they're wagering over is superfluous; what really matters is the way in which Ace of Spades becomes convinced that Toulou's baby is Jib's, not his. That's fine acting, and when it's unobstructed by the direction (which at times overextends) or by the script's hasty resolutions, Hoodoo Love works well. But right now, it's only as catchy as the occasional beats of the blues songs; to evoke is not enough: it needs to provoke as well.

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Milk 'n' Honey

Photo/Benjamin Heller

Like a chef's tasting menu, LightBox uses Milk 'n' Honey as a food-oriented pulpit to cram a lot of diverse theater down your throat. It's all quite agreeable, it's delectably plated (with a multimedia bent), and the servers are talented actors (as most waiters are, ha!), but the lack of a main course is ultimately a little unsatisfying. All of the different plots and characters on display made me feel engorged, and too much of the very real drama seemed mined for comedy (such as the excerpts from Michael Pollan's excellent The Omnivore's Dilemma). More digestible perhaps, and certainly more theatrical, but not very potent. Given all the loose ends, portions of the show seemed like fast food, but all the pieces together were a hearty meal that, while not wholly filling, were certainly interesting to try.

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