The 39 Steps

photo: T. Charles Erickson

This screwball spoof of the old Hitchcock suspense film isn't essentially unlike the movie send-ups from The Carol Burnett Show but it has an extra high-concept kick: three of the cast of four have to manage over a hundred different roles and the movie's story has to get told with only a few multi-purposed props and set pieces. (My favorite moment: when our debonair hero is led deeper and deeper into the villain's mansion, it's accomplished on stage by having him walk through the same repositioned door over and over again). Sometimes an actor will play four or five different characters in the same scene: we're meant to delight in the breakneck speed of the quick-changes which, although obviously planned down to the most minute detail, often feel as spomtaneous as genuine improvisation. The show may be spoofing a film, but it's mostly designed to make us laugh at the simple age-old tricks of theatre. I did laugh, but not nearly as often as I'd hoped to: a good deal of the gags are more clever than funny, and at ninety minutes the show outlasted my interest by about half an hour.

Jump

Yes, yes, martial arts are impressive, I get it. But in the rapidly growing "niche" of spectacles in the theater industry, Jump is, at best, a mere hop in the right direction. You have to admire the rubbery cartoon energy of these live action anime heroes. But that's about it. This show has at least four different directors (comedy, choreography, consulting, &c.): I'm astonished they manage to get off the ground at all and all the more surprised at how often they recycle the same jokes, the same moves, and the same effects, none of which are particularly impressive the first time. Jump falls flat on its face. And unfortunately, because the floor is one giant rubber mat, it doesn't have the grace to stay down.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: David]

Yellow Face

Photo/Joan Marcus

Fact and fiction don't bother me -- do what you have to do to tell the story -- but why bother going through all the effort if you're going to keep hiding behind a mask? David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face operates right now simply as an intellectual play: Hoon Lee comes on stage, introducing himself as the author, DHH, and then partakes in a compressed and conflated history of "his" (DHH's) rise as preeminent Asian-American theatrical spokesperson that begins with his award for M. Butterfly, travels through his failed farce, Face Value, and ends with his persecution at the hands of [Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel]. Humorous and Sorkin-lite scenes zip us from moment to moment, pausing briefly for HYH's (Francis Jue) fatherly counsel or to reiterate the main plot point: that DHH accidentally cast a white man, Marcus (Noah Bean) as his Asian lead, after protesting Miss Saigon for doing the same thing with Jonathan Pryce. But without David Henry Hwang actually onstage, it's just rhetoric in a sleek, cold framework: Extras without Ricky Gervais, Well without Lisa Kron. The extra dimension of vulnerability isn't there, so while we may think of artistic freedom and our race, we do not feel for it.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: David | Patrick]

Edward The Second

***1/2 (...out of 5)

Red Bull Theater

This unsubtle, yet wholly compelling production of Christopher Marlowe's Edward The Second features pages of production notes ("This play is about...") and an adaptation and direction that highlights/underlines/ALL CAPS the violence, eroticism and gayness. Some snobs and purists might scoff at this execution but for my classic-fearing ass (and for most likely all the other guys who went just because of the hot naked dude in the production photo) the pronounced way in which this tragedy of the royals was presented was welcome and helpful as there was far more clarity and understandability than I'm used to when I drop in on a 400 year old play. Add to that a sexy, top notch cast and an imaginative costume/scenic design that seemed to float around in some gorgeously stylized every-time and you have a production that I was very glad I got to see.

Also blogged in a much more learned fashion by: [Aaron]

Yellowface

Left At Intermish

The Public

If a script requires you to play Jane Krakowski in a non-spoofy, sincere fashion, think long and hard before you accept the role. Actress Kathleen Layng gave it her best shot, but I doubt even Meryl Streep could pull it off with any believability. A long list of other Broadway notables got their own vague impersonations (B.D. Wong, Cameron Mackintosh, Stuart Ostrow) in this play that seemed less of a play and more of a few angry pages torn from playwright David Henry Hwang's private journal. Elaborating on the touchy issue of Caucasians playing Asian roles the actor playing Hwang stood front and center and narrated in a very "this happened and then this happened" kind of way. The central conflict was promising but the execution was thoroughly un-engaging and charmless and my guest and I fled shortly after the tepid applause at the end of Act One.

Also blogged by: [Patrick]

Hansel And Gretel

photo: Ken Howard

The Met's new, 1930's-set production of Hansel And Gretel (imported from the Welsh National Opera) is extraordinarily grim and more than a little perverse: it never strays far from the kitchen. Even the haunted woods of the story are reimagined as a dining room, where Hansel and Gretel dream of being rescued not by a chorus of angels but by chefs. Driving home the theme of hunger with sledgehammer delicacy, the production feels severe and joyless: it even denies us a gingerbread house, instead substituting a single cake on a mechanical trolley. Does the Met really believe that this gruesome production (which also features Mom toying with a suicidal overdose before flushing her pills down the kitchen drain) will become a holiday staple for families? I can't imagine that anyone under the age of twenty will appreciate that the Witch resembles Julia Child (the production's one bit of mischievous levity) and I can't imagine that children will know what to make of Gretel sticking her fingers in batter and painting a Hitler moustache on Hansel. I can't imagine what any reasonable adult is meant to make of it either.