A Delicate Balance

The line between elliptical fascination and obscure tedium can be thin, and the current production of A Delicate Balance falls to the wrong side far too often.

John Lithgow, Glenn Close
Photo: Brigitte Lacombe

The long-married Agnes and Tobias have a careful relationship in which needs are drowned in words and alcohol and appearances reign. In its own way, the marriage is a success, although neither participant is particularly happy. Into their careful world come three challenges: Agnes's sister Claire, a "willful drunk" who speaks her mind; their daughter Julia, fresh from yet another failed marriage and whiny as can be; and their good friends Harry and Edna, fleeing from an overwhelming feeling of anxiety in their own home. The setup is intriguing, like a game of Jenga where each move brings the structure a step closer to collapse.

Into the Woods

Jim Cox

No, this isn't a review of the movie. I'm talking here about the Fiasco Theater production, which is currently in previews Off Broadway at the Laura Pels Theater. It's terrific: innovative, warm, funny, sad, infectiously goofy, and performed by a charming cast that lacks the studio-scrubbed pipes and carefully groomed good looks of the cast featured in the film. I'm paying the company a complement, by the way, and not implying that they're ugly--though if they were, that'd be cool, too. Into the Woods, after all, purports to be about our favorite fairy tale characters, but it's really about how messy and flawed and directly contradictory human beings are. Botoxed actors who wear their rags perfectly, and boast artful smudges on their faces, are kind of missing the point. 

So are productions (and films) that take the woods literally, at least as I now see it. Don't get me wrong: I saw the original Broadway production many years ago, and the film version about a month ago, and I thought both were fine. But neither one caused Into the Woods to work its way into my blood, brain, and soul the way that, say, past productions of Follies, Company, and Sweeney Todd have. I know plenty of people for whom Woods is top tier Sondheim. But me? I've just never understood what the fuss was about.

The River

Photo: Sara Krulwich

Playwright Jez Butterworth embraces the poetic in his work. In his 2009 epic Jerusalem (seen on Broadway in 2011, with Mark Rylance), he attempted to answer Blake's patriotic decree: "I will not cease from mental fight, / Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand: / Till we have built Jerusalem / In England's green and pleasant land." He ended up producing a play that matched the grandiosity of Blake's verse, which longtime readers of this blog will recall as not being one of my favorites. In his newest play, The River (currently on Broadway at Circle in the Square), both Ted Hughes and W.B. Yeats are name-checked, though its the latter who holds the key to understanding this intimate and beguiling chamber drama.

A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations)

Photo: Matthew Murphy

Sam Shepard came to prominence chronicling the battered and bruised families of the American West, so it should come as no surprise that he would set his sights on the most dysfunctional family in the history of theatre. His latest play, A Particle of Dread, is, as its subtitle suggests, a duel reimaging of Sophocles' trilogy, transported to two of Shepard's favorite locales: Ireland (by way of Thebes) and the contemporary Southwest. The former is a fairly straightforward retelling of Oedipus the King, albeit with strong brogues; the latter, a bloody true crime mini-epic that could be the love child of Breaking Bad and True Detective. The two narrative strands unspool through interlocking scenes, sometimes with accentual erasure, in order to keep the audience sharp to the dramatic parallels. And while the elements don't always come together harmoniously, the high-octane proceedings are never boring. Shepard's gift for tight, menacing language is sharp as ever, and the crack cast (which includes Tony winner Brid Brennan and, as the Oedipus figure, the great Stephen Rea) is, to a person, superb. A Particle of Dread concludes its run at the Pershing Square Signature Center on West 42nd Street this Sunday; it is brief, engrossing, and well-worth the effort.

[Sixth row center, TDF]

Film Review: Into the Woods

It's not good. It's not bad. It's just nice. And perhaps that's why the long-awaited film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods, which opened Christmas Day, is largely a disappointment. Directed by Rob Marshall, it is slick, stylized, and without much spark, not unlike Marshall's other two high-profile forays into movie musicals, Chicago (2002) and Nine (2009). The sets and costumes are beautiful. The performances are all professional and proficient, some are even great. The pace is spry. Yet the endeavor stops short of being wholly satisfying. It feels strangely empty in a way that even the less-than-perfect stage productions of this musical I've seen over the years never have.

2014: A Year in Review

Rebecca Hall and Morgan Spector in Machinal.
Photo: Joan Marcus

2014 was, like most theatre-going years, a grab bag of exquisite highs, painful lows, and a wide, bland middle. But as Wendy and Liz have both so rightly noted in their end-of-year essays, one of the beauties of being an unpaid blogger is that we have the luxury to focus on that which we enjoyed the most. Those who read my reviews regularly probably wish I would heed that advice more often--since rejoining this site over the summer, I've noticed that my negative columns seem to outweigh the positive--but I believe that one of the functions of this site, other than highlights and promoting the productions I absolutely love, is to advise readers to steer away from (or, at least, proceed with caution towards) that which I feel isn't worth the time and expense. Before I shower with praise the productions that lifted my spirits and transported me in the way that only good theatre can, I'll briefly highlight the hours of 2014 I spent in theatres, wishing I was somewhere else.