Still Life

In Alexander Dinelaris's Still Life (directed by Will Frears), brilliant photographer Carrie Ann (Sarah Paulson) hasn't taken a picture in months. Jeffrey (Frederick Weller), a trends analyst/forecaster, doesn't know how to open himself to love with a grown-up, challenging woman, but wants to. They meet, they hit it off, they get involved. Stuff happens.

There was something in Still Life, an intelligence, a desire to communicate, a thoughtfulness, that I found intriguing. However, it's hard to know how to respond to the play as a whole. The main characters are largely unlikeable. The photographer's crabbiness and nastiness are, I suspect, supposed to be sympathetic and even endearing, but they aren't. Similarly, the behavior of Terry (Mattew Rauch), Jeffrey's boss and the play's id, is supposed to be amusing and thought-provoking, but it is actually ugly and nonsensical.

From Dinelaris's playwright's note in the program, and from many of the characters' speeches, it is clear that Still Life is a play of ideas as well as a play of relationships. Many of the ideas are interesting, but their presentation as conversation doesn't work. It doesn't help that the cast has been directed to use a slightly heightened way of speaking that is terribly distancing. Only the always classy Adriane Lenox manages to come across as a sympathetic, flesh-and-blood, interesting person.

I concede that it is completely possible that I just didn't get this play. I saw a preview, and I assume that Still Life was still a work in progress. Perhaps the relationships and ideas will have been clarified by the time this review is posted. It's also possible that the play was already in its final shape but just not my cup of tea.

Gay Bride of Frankenstein

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Max Understood

Reviewed for Theatermnia.

Broke-Ology

photo: T. Charles Erickson

The story behind Broke-Ology makes it the kind of play you want to love, or even enjoy: a young playwright (Nathan Louis Jackson) lands in New York without a dollar to his name, and within a year goes from homeless and sleeping on the subway to a position as a commissioned writer for one of the foremost non-profits in the country (Lincoln Center Theater). Unfortunately, the play itself holds no more drama than your average freshman television series; it's often so predictable that I could guess not only the situations in which the characters would find themselves, but even the words they would use to describe them. The production (somewhat lazily directly by Thomas Kail) does have one thing going for it: a strong central performance by Wendell Pierce, as a proud patriarch whose life and community are crumbling before him. Pierce--along with Francois Battiste and Alano Miller as his adult sons, and Crystal A. Dickinson as his beloved wife--works hard to infuse the play with a level of tension that simply isn't there in the writing. Hopefully Jackson's next work for Lincoln Center, set to premiere next year, will give his actors more to work with.

Wishful Drinking

Based on her book of the same name, Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking is 45% autobiography, 45% stand-up, and 10% twelve-step meeting. Much of the material is very funny; little of it is new. The show runs a good 15 to 20 minutes too long, and Carrie Fisher the performer is not in the same league as Carrie Fisher the writer. (A friend of mine commented that Meryl Streep played Carrie better than Carrie plays Carrie, but it's not a fair comment. After all, Meryl could probably play all of us better than we play ourselves.) Wishful Drinking is for the already converted. If you think you'll enjoy it, you probably will. If you think you won't enjoy it, you probably won't.

My Scary Girl

He's a doofy 30-year-old virgin looking for a woman who reads and thinks. She's pretty, demure, and well-read, with one little, uh, quirk. Based on a movie, the campy and delightful My Scary Girl (at the New York Musical Theatre Festival) provides a highly entertaining 100 minutes or so in the theatre. Sung in Korean, with English supertitles, My Scary Girl shows that certain things are universal: love, shyness, and laughing at bloody body parts. With Broadway-style music by Will Aronson, book and lyrics by Kyoung Ae Kang, direction by Jung Joo Byun, and choreography by Sun Ho Shin, My Scary Girl has the makings of an Off-Broadway cult hit. Well performed by Jae Bum Kim, Jin Ui Bang, Jin Hee Kim, Jae Hong Jeon, Sang Hyun Jin, and Gi Ho Yu.