Ching Chong Chinaman

Reviewed for Theatermania.

The Boys in the Band

[possible spoilers below]

Rather than a coherent whole, The Boys in the Band comes across as two somewhat-related one-act plays. In the first, a bunch of gay men get together for a party and are snotty, fey, and funny. In the second, things get mean as too much alcohol is consumed, until Michael, the lead character, cries, "Why must we [homosexuals] hate ourselves?" But there is no evidence that the men do hate themselves for being gay. Harold hates being ugly; Donald feels scarred by his parents; Hank wishes that Larry would be monogamous; Larry wishes that Hank would accept an open relationship; Emory wishes he could get laid more often; Bernard wishes that the love of his youth loved him. Given a choice, Hank might choose to be straight, but for most of these men being gay is simply not the issue. It's almost as though author Mart Crowley wrote non-self-hating homosexuals despite himself. (I also didn't buy that even copious amounts of alcohol could turn the people in the first act into the people in the second act.) The not-uninteresting Transport Group Theatre Company production takes place in someone's penthouse rather than in a theatre, offering the audience a nice you-are-there sense of being at the party. However, in order to maintain the illusion, the show is presented without intermission, making the disconnect between the first and second acts even more jarring. The cast is uneven; the strongest performances are given by Jonathan Hammond, Christopher Innvar, and Nick Westrate. Director Jack Cummings III has chosen to pace the show slowly, with frequent, long pauses, particularly in the second act. I imagine he wants the effect to be profound, but it is frequently ponderous.

When the Rain Stops Falling

Family dramas often comprise similar ingredients: multiple generations, estranged relatives, alcoholism and/or drug addiction, long-kept secrets, deep attachments and deeper disappointments, and, perhaps, a touch of adultery, murder, incest, molestation, or some other dramatic sin. The challenge then becomes to present these ingredients in new, surprising, and freshly engaging ways. In When the Rain Stops Falling, author Andrew Bovell, director David Cromer, the designers, and the cast combine their prodigious skills to turn a not-particularly-unusual story into a profoundly emotional, satisfyingly theatrical epic. Their tools include a fractured timeline and poetically repetitive language that heighten the story-telling; compassionate, precise acting that allows the characters a certain grandeur, even when they are far from grand; and design elements that bring the audience into the center of the (physical and emotional) storms on stage. Simply put, the production of When the Rain Stops Falling at Lincon Center does indeed manage to present the familiar ingredients of a family drama in a new, surprising, and freshly engaging way that makes for a thrilling evening in the theatre.

The Book of Grace

photo: Joan Marcus

Elizabeth Marvel is one of the few actors who I'll see in absolutely anything, and you always seems to rise above and deliver when saddled with poor material. Case in point: The Book of Grace, the new play by Pulitzer-winner Suzan-Lori Parks, which is currently receiving a premature world premiere at the Public Theater. Marvel is the titular heroine, a woman whose pursuit of knowledge stands in direct contrast with the wishes of her hard-driving husband (John Doman, appropriately terrifying), an officer in the Texas Border Patrol. When his long-estranged, bi-racial son from a previous marriage (Amari Cheatom) arrives to "forgive but not forget", the fraught atmosphere proves detrimental for Grace, her desire to better herself, and her burgeoning sexuality. Marvel is brilliant at capturing every facet of this complicated character, but Parks has done her a disservice by leaving entire chunks of exposition simply unexplored. It also doesn't help that Cheatom is grimly miscast as the family interloper; he's nowhere near as seething as he should be, and his attempts at anger feel more petulant than anything else. In the end, it's Marvel's show (as usual). Surrounded by text and fellow actors, she still manages to stand alone.

When The Rain Stops Falling

photo: T. Charles Erickson

Andrew Bovell's dour, downbeat play, which flashes back and forward on several Anglo-Aussie family connections over four generations and eighty years, isn't for passive theatregoers; its ambitious structure demands patience and concentration just to connect who is who (despite the characters' family tree in the Playbill). While anything but formulaic, the structure is too clever by half: we're too often engaged with figuring out why the scenes are laid out as they are than with the emotional content. The reason for the challenging structure seems to be that it allows the playwright to delay the defining, key event that clarifies most of the play's characters, but to what end? Despite a sterling production (under David Cromer's direction) and many superb, detailed "kitchen sink" performances - particularly Mary Beth Hurt as an emotionally isolated alcoholic, and Victoria Clark as a wife slowly losing her sanity - the play is only involving as an intellectual puzzle.

+30NYC

The Red Fern Theatre Company describes +30NYC, its intriguing evening of one-acts, as "new plays imaging the next New York." Actually, New York is only important in a few of the plays; a more consistent theme is that the future is nothing to look forward to. In Tommy Smith's subtle tale, Thirty Story Masterpieces (directed by Jessi D. Hill), a young man (the excellent Brian Robert Burns) visits a middle-aged woman (Corinna May). Their conversation seems relatively innocuous (along the lines of, "Would you like a cigarette?" "Sure, why not?"), but a creepy, heartbreaking subtext gradually becomes apparent. In the confusing play in the Zone, a book becomes the center of a dangerous negotiation as well as a symbol of all that has been lost in playwright Michael John Garcés' dystopia. I suspect this might be a good play, but some of the performers were unintelligible; however, Maria-Christina Oliveras was excellent as the outlaw with nothing to lose. The affectingly creepy Fish Bowl, written by Christine Evans and directed by Melanie Moyer Williams, repeats a set of virtually identical lines, over and over, to limn a world where your body is not your own and no one is to be trusted. My favorite of the one-acts, Remembrance Vessel, smartly written by Ashlin Halfnight and well-directed by Melanie Moyer Williams, provides (welcome!) comic relief as the excellent Jessica Cummings, Kathryn Kates, and, in particular, Jordan Kaplan play people discovering that scientific advances can have surprising consequences. The other three plays, Footprint, Dodo Solastalgia, and Rosa's Little Jar of Fear, are all good; they explore, among other things, modular living, the return of the dodo, and airport security, respectively. In all, +30NYC is a strong evening of theatre and far better written, directed, and acted than many other collections of one-acts I have seen.