The World of Extreme Happiness

I suspect that there is something kind of brilliant and heart-breaking going on in Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's play, The World of Extreme Happiness. It didn't quite come across in the early preview I saw, but I don't feel that it would be fair to review it before it gets its sea legs.

What I do want to do is to tell you to read the insert in the Playbill when you see The World of Extreme Happiness. The play deals with Chinese culture and politics, and it helps a great deal to have the background that the insert offers. It covers One-Child Policy, Monkey King, coal mining, factories, the Great Hall of the People, and self-help books. The play covers even more than that!

If you do see it, please leave a comment about what you thought of it.

Rasheeda Speaking

I don't believe that every white person in the United States is a racist at heart , waiting only for the right provocation to reveal his or her true colors. I also do not believe that every white person will inevitably default to racist assumptions when having a disagreement with a black person. Or perhaps I believe that some white people at least struggle with their racism and have good manners.

Pinkins (standing), Wiest
Photo:Monique Carboni

Joel Drake Johnson clearly disagrees with me, and he makes his case, awkwardly, in his play Rasheeda Speaking, currently being produced by the New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center. The play takes place in the small front office of a surgeon, where two women, Jaclyn (the always compelling Tonya Pinkins) and Ilene (the disappointing Diane Wiest) greet patients and deal with paperwork. The surgeon, Dr. Williams (the bland Darren Goldstein), feels that Jaclyn doesn't fit in. He is clearly uncomfortable with her blackness (his particular racism rings true).

Rasheeda Speaking

The central question of Joel Drake Johnson's Rasheeda Speaking, currently in previews at the Signature Center, in a production by The New Group, can be summed up by an utterance one character makes halfway through the play: "Why can't black people and white people just get along?" The person doing the asking is Jaclyn (Tonya Pinkins), an African American receptionist in the office of a white Chicago surgeon, who's figured out that her boss (played by Darren Goldstein, who's very good) has enlisted her co-worker, Ileen (Dianne Wiest), to find a reason to let Jackie go. Hiring Jackie was a mistake, he says. She doesn't fit in. She makes the patients nervous. He already has a replacement in mind, a better fit: a white woman. The dog whistle rings loud and clear.

photo: Monique Carboni

Ileen, at first, is reluctant. She considers Jaclyn a friend (a notion that, with a gimlet eye, Jaclyn rebukes), but more piquantly, she doesn't want to see herself as complicit in a racially-motivated act. Jaclyn is wise to the situation long before anyone says or does anything overt. Pinkins and Wiest play well off of each other; they imbue their benign small-talk with just the right amount of barbed double-speak. Unfortunately, the writing is not always up to the level of the fine actors tasked with performing it. The office interactions between Jaclyn and Ileen are meant to build tension in their banality, and they occasionally do, but more often than not, they just seem dull. By the time the play really starts to cook, in the final twenty minutes or so, you're left to wonder if all that exposition was necessary for such a fleeting pay-off.

The production is helmed by the actress Cynthia Nixon, in her maiden voyage as a director, and I'm afraid that her relative inexperience does no favors to the deficits in the writing. There is nothing visually or stylistically interesting about the staging; Wiest and Pinkins spend most of the ninety minutes seated at their tall desks, which eclipse much of their body language. It's hard to give a complete performance with such an impediment. It's a testament to the talents of the cast--which also includes Patricia Conolly as an elderly patient who, in her brief scenes with Pinkins, does more to answer the play's central question than anyone else--that they are able to bring the nuance to their performances that's largely missing from the writing and the direction.

[Rear orchestra, TDF]

Big Love

photo: T. Charles Erickson

"There is no such thing as an original play." Those words belong to the playwright Charles Mee, who has spent the better part of the last twenty years proving that, while plots and dialogue and situations in theatre may not be strictly original, what you can do with them certainly can be. (Just look at Shakespeare). Mee calls his effort the (re)making project, and he focuses mostly on harvesting, re-focusing, and re-telling the works of Ancient Greece. One of his earliest efforts, Big Love (2000), is just now receiving its New York premiere, in a superb production by Tina Landau for the Signature Theatre Company.

Mee's foundational text for Big Love is Aeschylus' The Danaids, in which fifty sisters abscond from their grooms (who are also their cousins) on their wedding day. In this revision, the brides sail to modern-day Italy and take up residence at a luxurious seaside villa. Only three of the fifty brides appear on stage: the gentle Lydia (Rebecca Naomi Jones), who believes in the power of love, if not the duty of forced wedlock; the fiery Thyona (Stacey Sargeant), who views the male sex as a dangerous insurgency and quotes from Valerie Solanus' SCUM Manifesto; and the bewildered Olympia (Libby Winters), whose evident inexperience marks her as a target for the agendas of others. In short succession, their three grooms (played by Bobby Steggert, Ryan-James Hatanaka, and Emmanuel Brown) decamp, and the ensuing hundred minutes is a fantasia on the roles marriage, gender, culture, expectation, and, of course, love play in the formation of society.

Texas in Paris

Osceola Mays was the daughter of sharecroppers and the granddaughter of slaves. She sang for the love of singing, her family, and Jesus. John Burrus was a rodeo cowboy who sang cowboy songs and hymns. In 1989 they were brought to Paris to sing a series of concerts together. Texas in Paris, presented by the York Theatre Company, was written by Alan Govenar, based on his interviews with the actual Mays and Burrus and on the actual concerts they gave. Govenar is a writer, folklorist, photographer, and filmmaker. What he is not, unfortunately, is a playwright.

Photo: Carol Rosegg

Texas in Paris is slight and rife with missed possibilities, some of which are also director Akin Babatundé's responsibility. The plot, such as it is, follows the changing relationship between Mays and Burrus. Specifically, it shows Burrus's growing acceptance of a friendship with the cheerful, talkative Mays, despite his lack of experience with African-Americans, mild-mannered racism, and general laconic grumpiness. It is a slight plot, but potentially serviceable--except that it is treated as little more than filler between the songs. For example, [slight spoiler], the pair sings their songs separately. Mays sings a cappella; Burrus accompanies himself on the guitar. The first time she sings harmony with him, it should be a moment. Burrus should at least give her a look of surpris. He doesn't. And the first time he starts playing guitar for one of her songs, it should be a big moment. In fact, it should be as climactic as anything can be in this little piece. It's not. [end of spoiler]

Texas in Paris is not without its charms, the main one being Lilias White's lovely performance as Mays. White tamps down her usual theatrical exuberance and gets to the heart of this unassuming woman who sang for the love of singing. Scott Wakefield is good as Burrus. Best of all, they are not miked, and it is a treat to hear their unadorned voices in the York's cozy theatre.

Ultimately, Texas in Paris is a pleasant but minor 80 minutes in the theatre.

(press ticket, fifth row)

Film Chinois

The concept of Film Chinois, by Damon Chua, is a good one: noir goings-on in 1947 China, with a femme fatale who also happens to be a Maoist revolutionary. The writing is smart, with knowing winks at The Big Sleep and other classics, and an interesting attempt to marry overt politics with traditional fictional cynicism. Some of the performers are excellent, in particular Rosanne Ma, as the narrator and femme fatale, and Jean Brassard, as the knowing Belgium ambassador who may not know as much as he thinks he does. The scenery, costumes, lighting, and sound (by Sheryl Liu, Carol A. Pelletier, Marie Yokoyama, and Ian Wehrle, respectively) add exactly the right sense of atmosphere and foreboding. These are the makings of an excellent show.

On the other hand, the writing can be murky, and it's hard to know--or care--exactly what's going on. Some of the acting misses the boat; it's fascinating how thin the line is between deadpan and lackluster. Most importantly, the direction, by Kaipo Schwab, lacks the pacing, energy, and spark needed to ignite the proceedings.

There is enough worthwhile here to keep the audience rooting for the show to get really good, but it never quite does.

(press ticket, 5th row)