Aristocrats

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Sixty Miles to Silver Lake

Photo/Monique Carboni

Every moment between a father and son adds up, creating and sustaining the dynamic that they will share for the rest of their lives. Dan LeFranc's brilliant Sixty Miles to Silver Lake packs seven years of development into one cramped car, the outstanding Joseph Adams and Dane DeHaan neatly unpack it, and director Anne Kauffman, as always, keeps the whole thing moving with a realism that encompasses even the dreamier bits at the end. By setting the whole thing inside a car, even casual exchanges take on a deeper level of intimacy, and by skipping (without missing a beat) through time, LeFranc is able to show how that intimacy develops (or not). It's the mark of a talented writer that he is able to reveal such recognizable characters without resorting to cliche, and the mark of an outstanding team that it never slows down.

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Krapp, 39

Photo/Dixie Sheridan

Though he worries about it on stage, losing Samuel Beckett's character, Krapp, was the best thing to ever happen to Michael Laurence. Without that fallback, the actor is left with only bits of himself to show, and that allows this "autobiographical 'documentary' theater piece" to--if not transcend Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape--then at least to complement it. The whole conceit is pretty terrific, for in his efforts to prepare the way for a performance thirty years off, he delves all the way back to his childhood, musing not just on mortality but on the theatricality of life.

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Leaves Of Glass

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Theater Is Dead And So Are You

Photo/Carrie Leonard

Like a cross between Weekend at Bernie's and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Stolen Chair Ensemble's latest production is a slapstick think-piece, set in the vaudeville tradition. Some of the bits may come across a bit cold, but the ensemble's creativity and heart are alive and kicking. According to the playwright Kiran Rikhye, it's "the best and only live dead theatre that twelve to eighteen dollars can buy," which is true, especially when she's on--as with delightfully upbeat songs like "He Was Dead" and a corpse's performance of Romeo and Juliet. And when her meditations threaten to get weighted down by the convention, director Jon Stancato is there to save the day.

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The Cherry Orchard

photo: Joan Marcus

Sam Mendes' production of this Chekhov classic, which uses a new adaptation by Tom Stoppard, is a disappointment which fails to sound the needed notes of melancholy. The moments that ring true are few and far between: the talented cast, comprised of both British and American performers, doesn't register as a cohesive team, a problem that is compounded by staging that rarely creates the illusion that it's organic. Audiences coming fresh, without having seen another version before, might well question the play's reputation: the characters are reduced to stick figures.