You Never Can Tell

Watching the delightful production of George Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell being presented by the Pearl Theatre Company and the Gingold Theatrical Group, I had to periodically remind myself that I was not watching a play by Oscar Wilde. Following The Importance of Being Earnest by two years, You Never Can Tell shares its cheerful skewering of societal mores, its witty dialogue, and even a character declaiming fervently, "On my honor I am in earnest." The Importance of Being Earnest is probably the better play; You Never Can Tell has occasional languors, and Shaw's laugh/minute ratio doesn't quite equal Wilde's (whose does?). On the other hand, Shaw's politics are more interesting; for example, written in 1897, You Never Can Tell both teases and respects feminism.

What's most important is that You Never Can Tell is great fun. It includes romance, a family reunion, a costume ball, dentistry, and an entirely satisfying denouement, courtesy of an attorney-ex-machina. As directed (and lightly adapted) by David Staller, it moves along at a good clip (except for those languors) and lands its laughs with joyful precision. Some parts are a little overdirected and cutesy, but it's a small fault, and Staller's use of music and dance to sail through scenery changes is charming. (The scenery itself is a fabulous example of the wonders that a smart and tasteful designer, Harry Feiner in this case, can create on a limited budget.)

A show like this relies heavily on its cast to navigate that thin line between heightened acting and overacting. Under Staller's leadership, the Pearl stalwarts and non-Pearl-ians all acquit themselves energetically, earnestly (!), and with excellent timing. Particularly impressive are Sean McNail (who is always particularly impressive), Amelia Pedlow (who brings a sincerity to her role of reluctant lover that adds poignancy to the humor), and Zachary Spicer (who is perfect in a small but pivotal role).

I've said this before, and I hope I get the opportunity to say this again: The aptly named Pearl is a shining jewel in the New York theatre scene.

(2nd row center; press ticket)

A User's Guide to Hell Featuring Bernard Madoff

While watching Lee Blessing's mediocre A User's Guide to Hell Featuring Bernard Madoff, I found myself writing Caster's Rules of Satire.


General Rules

Rule 1: A satire should be entertaining.

Rule 2: A satire should reveal new truths or present old truths in such a way that they feel new.

Rule 3: A satire should have the courage of its convictions and not cop out at the end.


Tenets

Tenet 1: If a satire uses a character such as Mengele or Mohammed Atta for humor, the depiction had damned well better be funny.

Tenet 2: Arguments about God and religion must actually be interesting

Tenet 3: Blue-collar men with New York accents are not automatically entertaining

Tenet 4: Anal rape is not by definition a laugh riot and treating it as such is lazy writing.


So, anyway, Bernie Madoff (the serviceable Edward James Hyland) is in hell. His guide is Verge, a blue-collar New Yorker, played with little personality by David Deblinger. All the other characters are played by the excellent Eric Sutton and even better Erika Rose, the show's two redeeming features. The direction, by Michole Biancosino is uninteresting.

The program features a note from the playwright that begins, "Hell is funny." I don't know if that's true, but I do know that the version of hell depicted in  A User's Guide to Hell Featuring Bernard Madoff is tedious.

(press ticket; 5th row)

Fetch Clay, Make Man

What does a playwright owe a living person on whom he or she bases a character? What does a playwright owe the audience who comes to see a play "based on actual events"? Some people argue that the playwright owes nothing to either the person or the audience; the playwright needs to be true to his or her personal vision. And I understand their point; I think I may even agree with it, intellectually.

Ray Fisher, K. Todd Freeman
Photo: Joan Marcus

Emotionally, however, I find bioplays--e.g., Buyer and Cellar, The Audience, and Fetch Clay, Make Man, the focus of this review--distasteful. The playwrights piggyback on the fame and accomplishments of another person and present their fantasies of the person's life as art.

Another problem with bioplays is that wondering what is true and what isn't takes me out of the play. In Fetch Clay, Make Man, Muhammad Ali invites Stepin Fetchit to his training camp before his repeat bout with Sonny Liston. Ali attacks Fetchit, calling him a coon and threatening to beat him. This turns out to be a joking hazing, mostly. Did it happen? If so, Ali is pretty creepy. If not, playwright Will Power is possibly doing Ali a great injustice; the scene is ugly.

Later, Fetchit tells Ali's wife that she should discard her all-white, body-and-hair covering abaya and dress as the vibrant woman Fetchit knows her to be. And she does! We next see her looking impressively hot in heels, make-up, and a short, form-fitting dress. Did this actually happen? If so, did Ali really respond in such a low-key manner?

There are dozens of other questions of this sort, and even the trivial ones are distracting.

Putting these complaints aside, Fetch Clay, Make Man has the assets of energy and creative staging, along with some vibrant acting. Ray Fisher is a completely convincing Muhammad Ali. K. Todd Freeman as Stepin Fetchit effectively depicts a man trying to hold on to a dignity he is not 100% sure he deserves. And Power's exploration of what it has meant to be a black man in America is intermittently stirring.

The direction is by Des McAnuff. The projection design, which adds a great deal of energy but subtracts some clarity, is by Peter Nigrini.

Fetch Clay, Make Man ultimately left me with this question: I know what Power got by co-opting Ali's and Fetchit's lives, but what did he give in return?

(second row, press ticket)

Soul Doctor

Soul Doctor is not the greatest show on the planet, for sure, but it's certainly not the worst, either--and while there are problems with the show that have been cited repeatedly by critics and other bloggers, I found myself enjoying it immensely nonetheless.

Shlomo Carlebach might not be a household name (at least not in non-Orthodox Jewish households, or in households that are even a few miles from the Carlebach Shul on West 79th Street), but his approach to synagogue worship was both revolutionary and enormously influential. An early Schneerson follower, he was prominent in the baal teshuvah movement (in which a comparatively secular Jew "turns" toward Orthodoxy), and instrumental (pun intended) in infusing the contemporary worship service with music. If you've ever been to a synagogue service--whether Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, or Reform--in which congregants sing ecstatically, dance in the aisles, and intone extensive niggunim (Hasidic chants), you've likely witnessed Carlebach's influence whether you knew it or not. A devout Jew who devoted his life to outreach through music, Carlebach would seem to serve naturally as a central character in a musical.

Old Familiar Faces

The real-life siblings Mary and Charles Lamb lived in the 1800s in London and wrote together. The fictional (but-somewhat-based-on-Vivien-Leigh-and-Laurence-Olivier) Lee and Oliver are former lovers in present-day New York. The four personae share an intense love of Shakespeare. Perhaps more importantly, the four share the play Old Familiar Faces, written and directed by Nat Cassidy and late of the Fringe Festival.

Tandy Cronyn, Sam Sam Tsoutsouvas

Old Familiar Faces cannot help but bring to mind Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, as the characters overlap in scenes and interests from century to century. But the comparison isn't quite apt; where Stoppard connects his characters in location and history, Cassidy connects his in language and sensibilities.

Language is the play's raison d'etre. Combining quotations from Shakespeare and his own blank verse, Cassidy presents us with much that is beautiful and moving. To combine his own writing with Shakespeare's takes, what?, daring, courage, ego, balls? But Cassidy pulls it off, and the play is an aural pleasure.

Cassidy also presents us with three fascinating characters. Mary Lamb is seriously mentally ill; in a past attack of insanity, she stabbed her mother to death (true story!). Her brother cares for her and tries to make her life bearable, at obvious cost to his own. But while their lives as people are painful, their lives as writers challenge and fulfill them. They seem truly happy only when discussing their Tales From Shakespeare and what might go into the next volume. It is an odd, sad, emotional sibling love story.

Oliver is snarky, self-pitying, difficult, immature, mean, smart, and funny. He definitely gets some of the best lines in the play, as in:

You are insanely beautiful, you know that? Like, literally, Nietzsche-stare-into-the-abyss insane. You have the single most perfect ears. These little spirals that would make Fibonacci cry. Even this little thing here, what is it, a scar? It’s so perfect it’s unfair to the rest of the world, it’s almost treason. You should be beaten to death in the square for how beautiful you are. Where’d you get this little scar?

Lombardi Case 1975

My ten-year-old daughter, a native New Yorker, is occasionally bummed that we don't have space for a dog, that she has to share a bedroom with her little brother, and that we don't yet let her go too terribly far from our apartment without adult supervision. But otherwise, New York suits her just fine. She has been exposed to every culture and language you can imagine (and maybe some you can't). She's been to the Met, to Broadway, to the MOMA, and to Carnegie Hall many times (even though she never practices). She has developed a genuinely convincing menacing stare. She has heard and is unperturbed by the filthiest language you can come up with, practically since birth, whether on the street, in the subway, or, let's face it, out of her mother's mouth (I can't help it--I suspect I'd be able to make Ethel Merman blush). She is, in short, not easily phased by anything (except flying insects, but that's another story, and one that only bolsters my argument that she's a city mouse through and through).

I mention all this as a means for justifying the fact that when I got an offer to see LiveInTheater's Lombardi Case 1975--in which actors reenact a composite of several particularly seamy murder cases investigated on the drug-addled Lower East Side during the 970s--I promptly invited my kid along to see it, even though the description on the website, which you can read here, makes it clear that the show is rated R. Don't get me wrong: I was a little hesitant about bringing her, and I did plenty of explaining before we got on the subway and headed up to Ludlow Street. "This is a show about a murder, and it's set during a really rough time in New York's history, so the characters will probably talk a lot about drugs and sex and violence, and will probably use some pretty harsh language, but I think you'll be able to handle it," I told her, probably a few times more than I needed to. She shrugged, told me she was game, put on a sequined tank top that she deemed fancy enough for the theater, and then bitched about having to ride the subway from Brooklyn to lower Manhattan, and then about having to walk from the subway station to the Living Room, a whole four blocks away.

The Living Room, a bar with a small theater in the back, served as our meeting place. We took our seats at one of the small cocktail tables and were quickly approached by Officer O'Donnelly, who asked us repeatedly if we were ready to help solve the case. As more spectators began to trickle in, I noted that the audience was among the most ethnically and racially diverse group of spectators I think I've ever seen (seriously, Broadway, what the fuck? You should study this troupe, because damn if they don't do a good job of bringing representatives from just about the whole damn city together in ways that you still just don't). I also noticed--not as quickly as my daughter did--that she was the only kid in the room. "I sorta wish I'd invited someone to come with me," she mumbled, a few minutes before the show started. We sat tight, despite our misgivings. We're both so glad we did.