Come Back Little Sheba

photo: Joan Marcus

Although it takes some time to adjust to, it isn't the color-blind casting of S. Epatha Merkerson that trips up this in many ways otherwise sturdy Broadway revival of William Inge's classic. It's that there is no chemistry between her and Kevin Anderson: we don't believe that these two have been sufferrng through a co-dependent marriage for decades. Additionally her physicality is something of a hindrance: when we're told that husband was in the habit of hitting wife during his alcoholic binges, we have to work to suspend our disbelief. She looks like she could haul off and knock him to the floor with one arm behind her back. These things considered, it's remarkable that Merkerson is able to sound as many notes of quiet desperation as she does in a performance that nearly overcomes her miscasting. It helps that Inge's play has gained something as it has aged: it's now a period piece, rendering a time before the popularization of feminism when the suburbs were full of married women who were expected to raise children and keep busy keeping house. It's no longer only this woman's childlessness and her husband's alcoholism which can be plainly seen as isolating forces: we're now keenly aware of the options that society did not allow for women in 1950. Excepting that the play's central relationship does not ring true. and that the final moments are curiously devoid of their intended emotional impact, the production is handsome and efficiently staged, also offering excellent supporting performances from the ensemble including Zoe Kazan, Brenda Wehle and Brian J. Smith.

Crimes Of The Heart

Roundabout


First Preview Alert! As this revival of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play is still finding itself (and I think it will find itself within the week), I'll only offer up a few observations.

1. My Lily Rabe is MIA. Dammit. (Though understudy Jessica Cummings was charming.)
2. If you sit house left, you can intermittently hear dialogue from another play being performed- possibly from a rehearsal hall or from Speech And Debate playing in Roundabout's smaller space. Oops.
3. I can't stop looking at the way Chandler Williams is filling out his pants. Yum.

xodb

Almost An Evening

One of the toughest tickets in town right now is this trio of short one-act mindfucks by Ethan Coen. The middle one is a dud, save for a fun visual joke near the top, but the opener - about a guy whose afterlife in Purgatory gets screwed up seemingly by red tape and human error - is terrific. It plays like a black comedy version of an old Twilight Zone episode. Even better is the show's final one-act, which kicks off with God (played with gusto by F. Murray Abraham) berating the audience: "They're called the Ten Commandments you assholes not the Ten Suggestions!". Coen has written these plays so that each scene peels back a layer to reveal what's really going on - in other words, the less you know going in the better because the fun is in Coen's gradual reveal. While ultimately slight, the show is thorny, playful fun and, except that the scene changes are too long and threaten to break the momentum, the production is smart and precise. The show's entire run sold out in advance of performnces, but it's worth braving the stand-by line.

The 39 Steps

Photo/Joan Marcus

Everything that was impressive about Gutenberg! The Musical! and The Eaten Heart is lost on the gigantic set of the American Airlines Theater (Famous last words: "It was supposed to be a cast of four! A cast of four!"): Maria Aitken's clever direction often just gets swallowed up, as does this trite farce, which runs out of steam at about the same time that Richard Hannay (Charles Edwards) gets fed up with his co-stars (Cliff Saunders and Arnie Burton): "That's enough," he says at last, confronted with yet another "inanimate object" blocking his midnight escape. Saunders, who has already juggled roughly thirty characters (like lovable Mr. Memory) obliges, scurrying offstage to change for his next role -- that of a terse innkeeper -- while Hannay and fellow handcuffee, Pamela (Jennifer Ferrin) walk around in circles wide enough to set up the next scene. It screams gimmick, and while the first half of the play is loud enough to be wholly entertaining (especially if you recognize key props from the Hitchcock film or listen for the constant puns: "No! Don't go out that way! Use the Rear Window!), the entire package is too big and sleek for its own good. That said, the ensemble ought to get a gold star for being such good sports: it takes a very special sort of skill to be that believably silly.

[Also blogged by: Patrick]

Widows

Photo/Colin D. Young

Widows is a political play that digs remarkably deep, showing the stubbornness, futility, fearfulness, and courage of passive resistance -- and of military governance. Ariel Dorfman's script is best when it wells up into a rapids of sound that could smash even the sturdiest of rocks on the shore, but director Hal Brooks has done a solid job throughout, confining the action to a raft of a stage that, while occasionally tilting, is never in danger of sinking. Of particular note is the paradoxical tone of the play -- a loss even in victory, a victory even in a loss -- that has Sofia Fuentes (the strong Ching Valdes-Aran) rebelling by waiting (because she cannot bear to wait any more) and her nemesis, the good-intentioned but naive Captain (the excellently tormented Mark Alhadeff) trying to avoid using the force that he knows will only weaken them all.

[Read on]

Reading: Don't Fuck With Love

While Kate Matschullat has successfully modernized her adaptation of Alfred de Musset's On ne badine pas avec l'amour, in which a father tries to marry his son and his son's cousin (now a step-daughter), the philosophy of this play doesn't speak loud enough (despite the screaming title) to necessitate a revival, and this coming from someone who would love to see Jeanine Serralles playing so coy and intellectual a role. I have faith that it will get there in development with Red Bull, although I worry that while Lear deBessonet can easily direct this play (she connected well with the philosophical transFigures and got the heart of Brecht's St. Joan of the Stockyards), the mixed media of the cyberspace injected into the show might needlessly bog her down. I wonder, too, about the necessity of paparazzi who speak in verse . . . but these are just thoughts from a delighted audience member who knows this is a work-in-progress, and who is eager to see what comes next.