Mary Stuart

Photo: Alastair Muir

Sometimes a play disappoints because it's just not the play you want it to be. My interest in seeing Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart (in a new version by Peter Oswald) was simple: I wanted to see the face-off between Mary and Elizabeth, as well as the face-off between the actors playing them, Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter. And when it came, both pairs of women were all that I could hope: strong, smart, passionate, willful, fascinating. And then, mere minutes after it began, the face-off ended. And that was their whole interaction--much, much too short. (A friend pointed out that since they never met in real life, it was really much, much too long, but one of the beauties of theatre is getting to see things that never happened.) In the women's scenes with other people, Walter was sly, manipulative, and powerful, and McTeer chewed the scenery. Much of the rest of the play--too much--consisted of about a day and a half of exposition, followed by a lot of men in anachronistic suits plotting and planning and manipulating and fighting and yelling and conniving--well, you get the point. Much of the acting was excellent (Brian Murray, John Benjamin Hickey, and Chandler Williams in particular) and there was one great special effect, but I would have preferred the show be half as long and completely focused on the queens.

Everyday Rapture

Photo: Carol Rosegg

When I initially wrote this, before the reviews came out, I began with "for huge Sherie Rene Scott fans, this one-woman-ish show is a treat." But it turns out that Everyday Rapture is a treat for pretty much everyone but me. Perhaps it's because I saw a preview, and maybe it's improved a lot since then, but I thought the show was uneven and preachy. Everyday Rapture consists of a series of (autobiographical or faux autobiographical) stories, including a tribute to Mr. Rogers, told and sung by Scott with the assistance of her very likeable backup singers and a kick-ass band. The section in which she befriends a crazed fan from YouTube is the most successful part of the show, but it goes on too long. And the moral of the show--yes, it has a moral--is important and true but presented too much like a lecture.

Waiting For Godot

photo: Joan Marcus

It will always be a matter of taste and for debate: does Beckett's play mean nothing, or, everything? All can agree that two men wait, in vain, for another called Godot, passing the time in a bleak vaudeville. In this (Roundabout) production, the vaudeville is in fine form - how can it not be with the skilled clowning of Bill Irwin and Nathan Lane? - but the bleak is shortchanged: the production has no feeling of heft. John Goodman and John Glover do fine work in the supporting roles.

Waiting for Godot

Photo: Joan Marcus

From the moment the curtain rises, revealing the astonishingly beautiful set, this is a Godot well worth seeing. How Santo Loquasto manages to make an array of gray boulders both forbidding and gorgeous is beyond me, although I'm sure that Peter Kaczorowski's emotionally evocative lighting has more than a little to do with it. Bill Irwin, John Glover, and John Goodman are superb (and while I'm far from a Nathan Lane fan, I give him credit for tamping down his Nathan Lane-ness and actually playing Estragon.) Although I have seen four previous productions of Godot, I once again found the play surprising, funny, moving, bleak, true, absurd--and new. Exit the King strikes me as an extended skit; Godot strikes me as profound. (For the record, in this production, Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for God-doe, not Guh-doe.)

The Gingerbread House

photo: Carol Rosegg

The lights are barely up on the mod-austere set when a husband (played by Jason Butler Harner) suggests to his wife (played by Sarah Paulson) that they sell their two kids - don't they deserve to be happy and free from the parental duties that have stressed their once fun marriage? The heightened acting style (under Evan Cabnet's direction) and the severe set design prep us for an absurdism that Mark Schultz's play doesn't follow through on: eventually, we're asked to invest in the situation as if it was real rather than as the absurd allegory it first seemed to be about the selfishness in our culture. The acting is unified in style and tone, but Bobby Cannavale, as the outrageously slick baby deal broker, comes close to stealing the show.

Desire Under The Elms

photo: Liz Lauren

Desire under *what* elms, you might ask: there isn't a one anywhere in sight in this overheated tricked-out O'Neill revival, directed with a heavy-handedness (by Robert Falls) that brings the play's tragedy dangerously close to melodramatic camp. It doesn't quite get there but there are plenty of moments you'd be excused a hoot or two. O'Neill's play, like his Mourning Becomes Electra, re-sets Greek tragedy in twentieth century New England - in this case Dad takes a young new bride who falls in immediate mutual love-hate lust with her new stepson, her one rival for the old man's farmland. Falls seems to play the characters as archetypes in a grand operatic tragedy, but he revels in the young ones' lust so salaciously that it's hard to take it any more seriously than As The World Turns. Brian Dennehy does fine, commanding work as the old contemptuous farmlord, but Falls pulls focus from one of his most dramatic monologues by simultaneously staging a hot and heavy pantomime for the lovers. Carla Gugino, sounding more and more like Judy Davis, couldn't be better but Pablo Schreiber, who strips naked in the one of the play's too-stylish wordless interludes, could find more layers as the hotheaded son.