Les Liaisons Dangereuse

photo: Joan Marcus

Despite flashes of nudity and some overtly sexual on-stage business (even the climactic swordfight is staged with some crotch-to-butt thrusting) there isn't much danger in this handsome but mostly unexciting production of Liaisons: Ben Daniels' performance as Valmont is more bad boy romantic hero than icy sexual predator. As his duplicitous, manipulative partner in crime, Laura Linney works tirelessly but the role seems way out of her comfort zone and you're always aware how hard she is laboring. The stakes are therefore not set high enough in the first act (when we're meant to take at least a little perverse pleasure watching the two plotting and seducing) but the material is so strong that the second act (when we're meant to see how pitiful they truly are) works anyway: it's a solidly constructed, highly entertaining play, and even this production's missteps can't completely ruin that.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

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

Roundabout

Though I've seen the film maybe ten times, this was my first visit to the play the film was based upon. It's really a damn fine play. High drama...sizzling dialogue...all that good stuff we like in our dramas. In this production we have gorgeous scenery and costumes but with Roundabout at the helm that's (generally) a given. This production belongs to that sexy Brit, Ben Daniels, cast here as Valmont, the heartless lover who accidentally falls in love. He slinks about the stage hitting on everyone who comes within pinching-range and delivers his lines with a masculine purr. I will support the general notion that lovely Laura Linney is miscast. Though she's a stellar actress, her warm aura betrays the iciness of the character's nature.

EST Marathon 30: Series A

Focusing on the bad plays in a one-act festival is a waste of time: instead, I want to reward the writers who stuck their necks out a bit to take a risk, or produce something of value. In terms of risks, Michael John Garces's Tostitos is an unfocused ball of anger, but it's filled with a real energy and vitality that isn't often found on the stage. The smaller space at EST (as opposed to with The Shalimar) has helped to develop the feeling of ennui that drives this show, but I have yet to see Andres Munar allow himself to actually feel what's going on around him. Dude, you've worked a lot since Acts of Mercy, and you obviously have talent: grow up a little. As for value, David Auburn hasn't done much since Proof, but his new one-act, An Upset, is both clever and well-acted. In my mind, it's what Deuce should have been: an exciting verbally played tennis match between waxing and waning stars, and how that feels. The structure is a little forced--that is, it's clear where the play has to be going--but the dialogue remains surprising enough to really tell us something about the cost of stardom, athletic or otherwise.

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Saved

The teen film Saved, set in a Christian high school where a popular senior girl ditches her abstinence in order to cure her homo boyfriend, was pitched for satire; this musical adaptation is instead overly earnest and desperate not to offend, weighing down its heroine with so many wet, sincere "these are my feelings" songs that it's easy to forget that it's supposed to be a comedy. Played so often straight, the material feels tired; compared to Altar Boyz, which manages smart comedy while still respecting faith, it feels positively old and square. As long as you can accept that twenty-somethings are playing high school kids, the cast (which includes Curtis Holbrook, Celia Keenan Bolger, Aaron Tveit, and Mary Faber) is delightful - whenever my mind wandered I imagined hijacking them for a revival of Carrie: The Musical - and although the score has too many drippy ballads and some dreadful lyrics ("LIfe is screwy/So grab on to a life buoy") there is at least one song ("Heaven", easily the best production number in the show) that works splendidly as is and confirms that Saved might be savable with further development.

Saved

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

Playwrights Horizons

I agree with Patrick that this new musical is perhaps a little too precious for its own good. A sharper satirical edge would give our colorful teenage characters another layer to play within and also would not make New Yorkers think that they're attending church. Still though, I was charmed by this perky, needy little musical that follows the exploits of a crowd of haywire teens at a Christian high school. The songs were bright, the sensibility was modern (everyone texts and facebooks) and the show zipped along at a chipper clip. The cast is pretty perfect with Celia Keenan-Bolger leading the pack as the worrisome devout Christian determined to fix her boyfriend. I kinda wanna see the movie now.

The Actor's Nightmare/The Real Inspector Hound

Christopher Durang's The Actor's Nightmare and Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound are two fantastic (and fantastically different) riffs on the theater. Durang, ever the manic comedian, goes for broad strokes as he thrusts a hapless accountant, George (Michael Black), into an olio of dramas (Coward, Beckett, Shakespeare), skewering the whole lot with his memories of nuns. Stoppard, always one step ahead, ridicules the murder mystery (Christie's long-running The Mousetrap) by having two critics, Moon and Birdboot, remark on (and indulge in) the proceedings (Julian Elfer and Rick Forstmann, playing Michael Caine and Lawrence Olivier-like roles). It's a funny evening, but it's soured by thoughts of how sweet the production could have been, had Peter Jensen pushed the physical comedy further, and really sharpened the timing of both pieces. Some bits come very close, as when Spelvin haplessly grips a potted plant, or when Moon finds his own acting under the lens of the critics, but my funny bone ached for more.

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