Race

photo: Robert J. Saferstein

David Mamet's sharky waters can make many an actor belly up but James Spader cuts a course through the territory with killer ferocity. Lean and hyperfocused, his central performance as a no-nonsense, hip-shooting attorney is the reason to see this otherwise thin, far less provocative than advertised drama. The central plot concerns the legal defense of a noted, affluent middle aged white man (Richard Thomas) accused of raping a black woman. Mamet means to get in our faces as the lawyers (Spader, along with an excellent but underused David Alan Grier) suss out how to work the jury, but he doesn't really have anything substantive to say on the subject; it just keeps coming back to everyone feels guilty and everyone is out for themselves. Thomas has the extremely challenging job of playing a character who by design has to seem equally credible as guilty and innocent to the audience - he does the job, but his performance seems strategic at every moment. If you are familiar with Mamet you can easily predict what's going on with the young black female in the law office - it's not a real character but an idea of one, and Kerry Washington doesn't overcome its artificiality. Nonetheless there is genuine theatrical pleasure in watching Spader do a hustling, cunning Mamet man - he's a magnetic force on stage despite this being his debut, and he speaks the dialogue like he's spitting out nails.

Happy Now?

photo: James Leynse

While overlong (at 2 and a half hours), at its best Lucinda Coxon's portrait of a highly functional, entirely competent but unhappy modern woman (played by Mary Bacon) taps into a nagging fear: even doing everything we're supposed to and "having it all" isn't enough for happiness. To the playwright's credit, she doesn't have the character learn or espouse some tidy life lesson - instead we're asked to clock the ordinary, run of the mill disappointments and do the math ourselves. The playwright's overarching idea is solid, but some of the details are trite - a bit about how men hate "Will & Grace", for instance, makes you feel like studio audience. The play has a distinctive humor some of the time, such as in the nifty opening scene between our heroine and a cheesy serial seducer (C.J. Wilson, a hoot), but it's not consistent.

Dog And Wolf

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Clybourne Park

It's 1959 and black family's about to move into a white Chicago neighborhood, to the consternation of the community. White flight. Half a century passes and after rough times the neighborhood is ripe for gentrification. But resentment lingers into the new generation, and by the time a contractor digs up an old trunk buried in the yard, and plops the baggage of the ages literally on center stage, we've seen just how the ugliness of America's never-ending racial "conversation" has transformed over the decades – transformed, but hardly died down. Aided by Pam MacKinnon's commendably transparent direction and fine performances all around, playwright Bruce Norris has dramatized his perceptive view of these changes (and lack thereof) with wit, skill, and heart. The play never feels self-conscious; it deals with larger-than-life issues with compelling life-sized characters and naturalistic dialogue – the hardest kind to write. It's a marvelous accomplishment. Click here the full review and a discount ticket code.

Parsons Dance

If you have any interest in dance and you haven't seen the magical, joyful Parsons Dance, you really should. They're at the Joyce through February 21st. I particularly recommend that you catch the astonishing, breath-taking Caught.

Fanny

[Spoilers below.]

The thoroughly amiable Fanny, Encores! latest re-creation, tells the story of a couple separated by his love of the sea. Harold Rome's music is lush and lovely; his lyrics are serviceable. The strong cast is led by Elena Shadow as Fanny; James Snyder as her errant lover Marius; Fred Applegate as Panisse, the man she marries to give her and Marius's child a name; and George Hearn as Marius's father. The show's almost fairy-tale amiability works against its ability to develop any deep conflict: for example, Panisse is too good to be real, even going so far as to die in time for the lovers to re-unite. It also has a couple of songs that are real earworms ("Oh, Fanny, oh Fanny, Fanny," etc). But Fanny's old-fashioned charms are many, and Encores! did well by it.