Henri Gabler

Hedda Gabler is arguably theatre's most enigmatic classic character, but it's generally agreed that her cruelty and destructiveness are partly a rebellion against the societal constrictions placed on her. In Exigent Theatre's modern-day, gender-changed adaptation the character, now Henri, doesn't seem to have societal constrictions: he's a famous member of the gay cultural elite, a blogger whose popularity rivals The Huffington Post and whose recent gay marriage is entirely state legal. The playwright (Alexander Burns) scores best when he steers the play into baldly political territory - there's an especially provocative speech in which one character vows to live "old school" and avoid marriage entirely - but he's constricted by a faithfulness to the blueprint of Ibsen's play that sometimes obscures the message of his adaptation. Additionally there are some odd choices that one doesn't know how to interpret- one might expect the Lovborg character to be a passionate free thinking modern artist rather than the moeneyed square in a suit that he is here, for instance. Nonetheless, there is a good deal of wicked fun in this "queer" revision and an exceptional performance - by Vince Nappo, playing the role based on Tesman - among some very good ones. Nappo, brilliant last Summer in Other Bodies at The Fringe, is the kind of actor who seems to make nothing but intelligent choices in his approach to a character and who fills up every moment on stage.

West Side Story

photo: Joan Marcus

You watch the dancing in this revival - skirt hems being lifted, men leaping through the air with one arm up and the other out - and marvel at the brilliance of Jerome Robbins' craft, but you don't feel the tension that the dances used to convey; the choreography of West Side Story has dated in a way that the moves in On The Town have not, perhaps because we've seen so much dance in the intervening years to express urban danger and bravado. Still, aside from hearing the glorious score, the dancing is the best reason to see this mostly unexciting revival in which none in the principal cast - apart from Karen Olivo, very good as Anita - are up to the task. (Josefina Scaglione does well as Maria in the first act - she's remarkably credible at sincerity and innocence - but she lacks the dramatic heft to be effective in the second.) The much-discussed infrequent use of Spanish for select scenes turns out to be nothing more than decorative: sometimes it's contrary to common sense, such as when Anita and Maria don't want the policeman to know what they're planning but speak in English, after having sung all of "A Boy Like That/I Have A Love" in Spanish.

Zooman And The Sign

Reviewed for Theatermania.

A Little Night Music

Photo: Carlos Gustavo Monroy

In a perfect world, there would always be a top-notch production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's A Little Night Music running nearby. This isn't a perfect world, so the production of Night Music at the White Plains Performing Arts Center was a rare and lovely treat. Yes, the production values were nonexistent. Yes, the orchestra was too small. Yes, the cast was uneven. But the production still managed to capture the wistful humor and rueful romance that make Night Music unique among musicals. (The show is in my top five musicals ever.) Stand-out performances by Mark Jacoby, Erin Davie, Eddie Egan, and Sheila Smith certainly helped, and the score and the book remain as wonderful and new as they were in 1972.

I would have enjoyed the show even more if the high school class sitting nearby had ever shut up (they even changed seats during the show so they could talk to different people!). The management of the theatre spoke to them during intermission, and I moved to the other side of the theatre for the second act, but the unruly, unmannered little twerps deprived me of the full enjoyment of a solid production of a gentle masterpiece.

God of Carnage

photo: Joan Marcus

The overarching idea is ripe for comedy - two civilized well-to-do married couples meet to smooth over a playground fight between their children but soon sink to sandbox level themselves - and the quartet of fine actors have a blast throwing mud at each other. Once the play gets up to full swing, there are laughs to be had of the "rage beneath the calm" variety, as well as the considerable pleasure of seeing these performers (James Gandolfini, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeff Daniels, and Hope Davis) play such primal emotion and childish behavior. But too much in the set-up of Yasmina Reza's play, translated from French by Christopher Hampton, is woefully contrived: we don't believe that the couples would stay in the same room together after their first insults, and after that we especially don't believe, as written and staged, that each of the couples would in-fight in front of the other. Since the premise of the bitter comedy depends on our belief in and recognition of the civilized social pretenses that the couples first exhibit, the careless set-up costs the play a good deal of its potential impact and keeps it from amounting to anything more than an actors' playground.

Incident At Vichy

photo: Steve Kunken

While not from the playwright's top drawer, this one-act strongly bears his unmistakable stamp: you know you're in Arthur Miller territory when characters turn to each other and say things like "We have learned the price of idealism". The play - in which a line of men await questioning in Nazi-occupied France with the gradual realization of their fate - is wordy and creaky, but its arguments are world sized and timeless, and it can work well enough if there is sufficient gravity and tension on stage. Unfortunately that's exactly what's lacking in this production by The Actors Company: the stakes haven't been raised to life-or-death level, so the actors too often sound like they are making the playwright's speeches rather than struggling to make sense of humanity.