Missives

photo: Barbara Iams Korein

If I'm going to believe that two seemingly well socialized young urbanites - Lia, a straight black woman, and Ben, a gay white man - conduct an intimate years-spanning friendship only through written letters even though they live across the hall from each other, I'm going to need a lot more convincing than I got from Garret Jon Groenveld's play Missives. The playwright clearly intends for their letters to strike us as deeply personal and revealing, but that's where he's most wrong: nothing the two write to each other is so naked or humiliating as to forbid face to face contact, so the premise that they continue to avoid anything but letter-writing begins to grow precious. The play is mostly a flashback, framed by Lia giving us direct-address information that immediately drains any suspense out of the show: it isn't until late in the first act when Ben gets a boyfriend (played with vibrancy and endearing vulnerability by Ryan Tresser) that the play has any measure of dramatic conflict. As Lia, Shamika Cotton builds judiciously to the play's final emotional scenes and it's to her credit that she got me to feel something long after I went numb on the play (which was about half an hour earlier, with the second-act introduction of a character right out of crime-drama stock).

The American Dream/The Sandbox

Photo/Jaisen Crockett

In the first half of The American Dream, Edward Albee's revival of two of his early and absurd one-acts, the first thing you'll notice is probably the color scheme: a red and blue chair, divided by a love seat, with a faded background of American stripes and bars, looking more like a circus prison than wallpaper. That's all fitting, for Mommy (Judith Ivey) and Daddy (George Bartenieff) are -- though they seem tame at first -- animals, living, breathing embodiments of that savage (and soon to be savaged) American Dream. However, the ensuing eighty minutes of awkward pronouncements ("I just giggled and blushed and got sticky wet") have aged about as well as the emasculated, shuffling Daddy: they have little impact. Part of this is the acting, which is either wooden itself (granted, Lois Markle is a last-minute replacement for Grandma) or as paper-thin as the character: as Young Man, who is literally the American Dream, Harmon Walsh bears a huge responsibility on his shoulders, but he neither snuffs out his emotions nor instills the character with a sense of strength, and this leaves his role with a great deal of ambiguity, as does the play (which isn't even theater of the absurd at its finest). As for The Sandbox, which is shorter than the intermission preceding it, at least it and its Angel of Death (Jesse Williams) are swift.


[Also blogged by: Patrick]

In The Heights

Photo/Joan Marcus

Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical about a cheery community in Washington Heights has been scrubbed clean of any hard-hitting drama, but it's still a fresh, fun new show in its own right. In The Heights is best when it's playing to the larger-than-life atmosphere, rather than when it focuses on the rather simple problems of its individual residents. Additionally, few performers beyond Miranda (Robin De Jesus as the comic relief, Sonny; Andrea Burns as the sassy salon girl, Carla; and Karen Olivo as the strong-backed but loose-limbed Vanessa) have the necessary charisma or vocal presence to carry solos or duets. Just as there's no charisma between Benny and Nina (Christopher Jackson and Mandy Gonzalez), there's no conviction behind songs like "Inutil" or "Enough," and that hurts Carlos Gomez, Priscilla Lopez, and the whole show. Thankfully, In The Heights focuses most often on the whole neighborhood, a confection that's completed by Andy Blankenbuehler's merengue-flavored choreography, Howell Binkley's fireworks in the light department, Thomas Kail's constantly moving, urban-flowing direction, and Miranda's fusion of familiar Broadway tropes with the shaken-up spasms of rap or the multicultural beats and grooves of a whole new rhythm.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: Patrick]

What's My Line?

Photo/Genevieve Rafter Keddy

More cool than kitschy, more memorable than simply memorabilia, the live stage version of What's My Line? is both irresistibly honest and hokey at the same time. Men are gentle again, wearing tuxedos and pulling out chairs, and women aren't just women -- they're dames: gowns, gloves and all. It's a throwback to another time, but the comically "risque" questions are just as funny now as when this ran on late-night TV for 25 years, and with new panelists and guests "competing" (for fun) each week, it's simple commercial fun. I admit I don't know Betsy Palmer (one of four rotating panelists), but watching her ask questions like "Can I put this piece of wood in my mouth?" was great fun, even more so considering that the line in question ("line" is an old-fashioned way of saying "job") was that of Liang Wong, the youngest oboist ever for the New York Philharmonic. I certainly wouldn't go back on a regular basis, but it's a trip down memory lane, even for those of us too young to remember how things were way back when.

[Read on]

Man Of La Mancha

photo: Ruiz Photography

Two guitars and a lot of bucket-drumming: that's the musical accompaniment in this all-male version of the classic musical now re-set in a modern-day prison. The young performers bring off the musical numbers well enough under the circumstances (although "The Impossible Dream" must be excepted: that anthem loses a lot of power sung to just strummed chords) but the production's directorial conceit is ultimately too problematic: there is so much business to tell us that these prisoners are merely acting out Alonso's story of Don Quixote that we never get the room to become involved in it, and we have no clue as to why it is powerful and inspiring. More damagingly, there is much confusion when some of the events in Quixote's story happen not to the characters in the play within the play but to the prisoners. The goal may have been to heighten the danger in the material, to emphasize the high stakes by illustrating how the story Alonso enacts with the inmates has relevance to their plight, but the result makes for a narrative mess. (The friend I saw this with, who had somehow never seen any production of Man Of La Mancha before, didn't have any idea what was going on.) Still, for those who are already well acquainted with the material, there are moments when this bold re-imagining is fascinating in its audacity: I'll never be able to hear about that Golden Helmet Of Mambrino again without thinking of its "golden" moment in this production.

Burning My Dreams To The Ground

**** (...out of five stars)

Michael Weller Theater

Full disclosure! This story-spieler is a friend of mine (we were both stationed in Normandy during the war). I caught the final dress rehearsal of Gregory Marcel's one person meditation on the success of failure and am happy to report that he is giving us a funny, intense, brisk, evening of engaging storytelling. Like seriously. Drawing on his own experiences as a child in Jersey and then a working actor in New York, he narrates his own personal search for that elusive concept known as "fulfillment". Mostly conversational with plenty of hysterical impersonations along the way (I was partial to his drunk horny chick character), his expressive personality and friendly chatty rapport with the audience was just so damn charming. Thumbs up old school. Oh yeah- and he's hot.

Runs till March 30th. Hurry. For more info and tickets go here.