Benefactors

If Michael Fray had written nothing but the delightfully hysterical Noises Off, he would still rate a place in the heart of all theatre lovers. However, Frayn has written a great deal more than that, and the rest of his prodigious output is also impressive. A prime example is Benefactors, currently on the boards in a fine production by the Keen Company.

Benefactors is the story of two couples, longtime friends who may not be sure exactly why they are longtime friends. Jane and David are happy together and enjoy his work as an architect (Jane works as his assistant). Colin and Sheila have a more problematic relationship, with Colin blustery and critical and Sheila lost and manipulative. All four live lives of careful balance, ignoring emotions that might tip the scales, until one of David's architectural projects undoes their balancing acts.

Using a combination of straight-to-the-audience speeches and intercharacter conversation, Benefactors explores the meaning of giving and of friendship and examines the lies we tell each other, and ourselves. Frayn has a fascinating ability to write lyrical dialogue that still sounds like actual people speaking, and the beauty of the language is one of the many strengths of this excellent play. The direction by Carl Forsman and the performances by Vivienne Benesch, Daniel Jenkins, Deanne Lorette, and Stephen Barker Turner are all top-notch, with extra kudos going to Benesch for being such a compelling listener.

It is amazing enough that Frayn is so prolific. That he is so prolific and so good is breathtaking.

(Press ticket, fourth row on the aisle. Audience included about 50 high school girls, who were engaged and even gasped now and again.)

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

Photo: Ari Mintz

Star power comes in two varieties. In the first, a person is born with enough charisma to mesmerize everyone in the vicinity. Hugh Jackman flirted with a thousand people a night, individually, in The Boy From Oz. Ann Reinking glowed in the chorus in Pippin, even when the audience was supposed to be looking elsewhere. Christine Baranski seems to carry a personal spotlight wherever she goes.

In the other form of star power, the performer brings fame and its attendant glories from a completely different arena. Theatre is full of examples, some of whom were actually good, some of whom weren't: Julie Roberts, Hammer, Melanie Griffith, Ashley Judd, Katie Holmes, George Hamilton. Some turn out to be true theatre people, Neil Patrick Harris being a prime example.

Daniel Radcliffe falls into the second category, subcategory "true theatre person." He has brought his huge, enthusiastic audience with him to the theatre, and he has worked his butt off to be the best performer he can be. His choices of roles are interesting and varied (from Equus to How to Succeed is quite a journey!), and he clearly cares.

Unfortunately, however, he is low on star power, category one. If you're not already a fan, he comes across as an amiable, not-too-bad performer. He is cute, and he uses that well. When his J. Pierrepont Finch grins at his series of triumphs, it's a cute grin. But without his Harry Potter juice, there would be no reason to cast him in a singing-and-dancing role requiring tons of charisma and personality.

However, he does have that Harry Potter juice, and the audience was thrilled by his every move, while muggle-me sat there unimpressed and unmoved (with the exception of the "Brotherhood of Man" finale, in which he finally showed some oomph). However, God bless him. He's bringing in young audiences, and I respect his commitment and hard work.

What about the rest of the show? This production is like a drum machine--lots of energy but little humanity. The scenery is aggressively ugly. As the head of the company where Finch works, John Larroquette does his John Larroquette thing, which is quite effective if you like him (I do). A handful of other cast members rise above a general blandness, including Michael Park, Rob Bartlett, and Ellen Harvey. The romantic female lead, Rose Hemingway, is unimpressive.

And then there is (drum roll, trumpets) Tammy Blanchard (see star power, definition one). As she has shown on stage and on TV and in movies, she has it. No, she has IT. Simply walking onstage, she brings a blast of energy, excitement, and three-dimensionality. Her performance as the not-so-dumb dumb mistress is wry and sexy, and her decision to never quite stand still, like a thoroughbred waiting to race, brings a palpable reality to her silly character.

I wonder if Blanchard can bottle whatever it is she has. She'd make a fortune.

(Press ticket, row P, center. Many thanks to How to Succeed and the Hartman Group for including the blogosphere.)

The Dream of the Burning Boy

David West Read's new play, The Dream of the Burning Boy, presented at the Roundabout Underground, explores the repercussions when a star high school student dies. As often happens in dramas, secrets are revealed, emotions are stripped raw, and people grow and change--or don't. However, while the précis may be familiar and even cliché, the specifics are not. Read presents compelling, fully realized characters, and their secrets are both surprising and believable. He also deals with the realities of theatre in interesting ways. For example, having the bulk of the students take advantage of the school's bereavement leave, while the people who are genuinely grief-stricken show up, is a wry way of accounting for the sparsely populated schoolroom. Most strongly affected by the boy's death are his sister, his on-again, off-again girlfriend, a well-meaning, not-quite-as-ineffectual-as-he-looks guidance counselor, and, most importantly, the boy's English teacher, who is the dreamer of the burning boy. After a slightly rocky start, the cast is uniformly strong. Special attention must be paid to the subtle, smart Reed Birney whose complex portrayal makes his character sympathetic without ever downplaying his significant flaws. Well-directed by Evan Cabnet.

(Paid for my ticket--all seats are $20--sat second row behind a man with a big head.)

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s revival of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, which has been running at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway since mid-December, adds weight to the saying that it’s a lot easier to trash something in writing than it is to praise it. I thus have little to add to the many glowing reviews of this production, except more ecstatic superlatives. With the exception of some of the backdrops, which might have been painted a bit more richly, or made to look somewhat less fake—and ultimately, really, who cares about the damned backdrops?—this is about as close to a perfect production as I have ever seen. Even the woman playing the maid who walks on to serve tea in the second act and then walks right back off again is perfectly cast. The show, which I saw last week and which has only grown in my estimation since, serves as a humbling reminder that while there is a whole lot of very good theater out there, it is the rare production that comes as close as this one does to being absolutely superb.

I was told once by an old colleague that the infamous flop Carrie was so terrifically bad that it regularly earned wild standing ovations after many performances during its doomed New York run. In contrast, this production of The Importance of Being Earnest was so good that I was unable to bring myself to stand at the end of it. Standing ovations have become such a marker of mediocrity on Broadway at this point that to have stood for this production would, I think, have somehow cheapened the experience. This was an excellent show. Please don’t miss it.

Hello Again

Ten people. Ten couplings. A has sex with B who has sex with C, and so on, until H meets up with A, completing the circle across the 20th century. The hookups tend toward the cold, with affection, love, and foreplay in short supply. The characters range from lost to needy to manipulative, with unhealthy, unattractive self-involvement a frequent trait. Yet Hello Again, Michael John LaChuisa's musicalization of Arthur Schnitzle's 1900 play La Ronde, is often glorious. LaChuisa's music soars, and each section is an elegant theatrical creation. His paeans to neediness are heart-rending, and he combines humor with heartbreak perfectly.

As directed by Jack Cummings III in a large, feature-less loft, Hello Again happens in and around the audience, providing an intimacy that is simultaneously wonderful (having those singers right next to you, unmiked, is heaven) and, well, icky. Facing those naked pumping butts, so close at hand (literally), is weird. The first time I saw the show I found them funny, but the second time I felt I had been forced into an unwilling, unfulfilling voyeurism. Since lack of fulfillment is a theme of the show, I guess Cummings made an artistically legitimate choice--but still weird.

However, Hello Again is about the music, and the score is beautifully sung. The cast ranges from quite good to excellent to amazing. Particularly impressive are Bill Stillman, Alexandra Silber, and Elizabeth Stanley, who bring full dimensionality to their characters and definitively nail their songs. 

The costumes by Kathryn Rohe and lighting by R. Lee Kennedy are everything they need to be and much more, and the seven-piece band fills the loft space splendidly.

(Tdf tickets, twice, impossible to describe my seats in any useful way.)

 

Room

Ellen Lauren seems at first an odd choice to play Virginia Woolf. She is tall and strong, with large hands and a deep, impressive voice quite different from Woolf's flutey, fruity tones. It is hard to imagine her with Woolf's vulnerability. But Room, directed by Anne Bogart, does not aim to present a biographical depiction of Woolf. Instead, through movement (not quite dance, yet not quite not dance) and Woolf's own words (adapted by Jocelyn Clarke), it presents an emotional portrait of a writer in desperate need of, in Bogart's words, "the room to move, the room to breathe, the room to imagine; emotional room, creative room." Presented as a speech to a female audience, the show also spends time in the intense maelstrom of Woolf's mind, focusing on the act of creation and on being a writer who is a woman . Ellen Lauren's performance is both an acting triumph and an athletic triumph--she does entire speeches in positions that might challenge a yoga expert, never losing sight of the meanings and feelings of the words. Bogart's direction and the design aspects are simple yet evocative. The stage is lined on three sides by large panels of linen, with a single chair as the only furniture. A small window floats high above the stage, sometimes looking like the window of a jail cell, sometimes appearing warmer and more inviting. Where design elements often supplement or support performance, the excellent soundscape by Darron L. West and lighting by Christopher Akerlind are part of the performance.

(Press ticket, fourth row on the aisle.)