The Qualms

Photo: Joan Marcus

Bruce Norris can write. His dialogue crackles, his jokes mostly land, and occasionally he creates surprisingly vivid, three-dimensional characters. He's also a polemicist, and while he's less didactic -- and far less capital-S Serious -- than present-day windbag David Mamet, it's always clear that he has a point to put across, and he won't rest until you get it. This usually results in his plays, at some point, devolving from breezy, mildly unsettling evenings into a full-on death match, in which the characters basically form a circle and start berating each other. (For reference, see: pretty much the entire second act of his Pulitzer Prize winner, Clybourne Park). Again, this is not to say that the man's without talent. It's just that some people are better at using the sugar to make the medicine go down.

Norris' latest, The Qualms (at Playwrights Horizons through July 12), has a lot going for it. For my money, it boasts the tightest acting ensemble currently treading boards in New York. The action -- no pun intended -- centers around a beachfront condo where a group of middle-aged, well-to-do suburbanites have gathered to swap partners. Most of the guests are old pros; the too-cutely named Chris (Jeremy Shamos) and Kristy (Sarah Goldberg) are the newbs. Kristy hooks up with the host's partner (the brilliant Kate Arrington) within the first five minutes of the play; Chris spends the full ninety minutes resenting the entire arrangement, despite the fact it's implied that the idea to attend was his. 

The Qualms

The Qualms, by Bruce Norris, focuses on a bunch of friends who get together periodically to have sex with one another in twos and threes. They are mellow, sure of what they want, and loving. On the night of the play, a new couple has joined them: Chris and Kristy. Chris and Kristy radiate the awkwardness of people who have never done this before and aren't 100% sure they want to do it now.

Champlin, Lucien
Photo: Joan Marcus

In a way, The Qualms is a Utopia story. A group of people have made the world they want, and it works, until (not to mix metaphors) the snake shows up in the garden of Eden.

Chris is the snake here, and what an overwritten, straw man of a snake he is. Of course, he's white and works in finance. Of course, he's rigid and humorless. Of course, he's moralistic and judgmental. Of course, he's racist, sexist, homophobic, and size-ist. Of course, he's jealous and paranoid. Of course, he's unrelievedly rude. And, of course, they don't just throw him out on his ass, because then there wouldn't be a play.

Guards at the Taj

Doug Hamilton

Rajiv Joseph's stunning heart-breaker of a play, Guards at the Taj, is currently running through the end of June at Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater. It is a beautiful production: crisply directed by Amy Morton, sumptuously lit by David Weiner, and superbly acted by Omar Metwally (Humayun) and Arian Moayed (Babur). I hope it gets extended, and I hope you get the chance to see it.

Guards at the Taj is similar to Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo in its moody ruminations and its gently absurdist bent. But it is a smaller, more carefully constructed, and thus more emotionally satisfying affair: two characters, two sets, five brief and tautly constructed scenes. The show examines a few years in the lives of two (very) low-level imperial guards in Agra, India during the mid-1600s. Humayun and Babur are just as lost and yearning as many of the characters in Bengal Tiger were. But while that play felt looser and less cohesive, Taj zooms in on its characters' preoccupations, philosophies, emotional needs, strengths and weaknesses. Also, their lifelong friendship and love for one another, which is central to this play's warm, if also rather bloody, heart.

10 out of 12

Tech rehearsals occur in the days immediately preceding actual performances. They allow the set, lighting, and sound people, along with the stage management team, to practice, polish, and sometimes even perfect their end of things. Tech rehearsals are notoriously stop-and-go. For example, a scene might get a line or two in and then be stopped for 20 minutes as lights are dealt with. Two lines later, the scene might be stopped again to fix a sound cue. Tech rehearsals tend toward the tedious, but they can also be full of humor and comradery.

Sue Jean Kim
Photo: Julieta Cervantes

Anne Washburn's new play, 10 out of 12, directed by Les Waters at the Soho Rep, immerses the audience in the not-very-smooth tech rehearsals of a not-very-good play. We watch scenes from the show and see and hear the designers and director make artistic decisions and deal with obstacles. The characters are located all around the theatre, as they would be in a real tech. Through individual audience headsets, we also hear the stage manager and backstage techies do their jobs and chat about this and that. We witness personal interactions both in the theatre and on the headsets. It's a nice setup.

Heisenberg

photo: Joan Marcus

An almost-bare stage, two actors, razor-sharp direction, simple lighting, a few props: sometimes this is all you need to create an absolutely magnetic piece of theater. Such is the case with Heisenberg, the new play by Simon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) Stephens receiving its world premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club's intimate Studio at Stage II. It may well be the hottest ticket in town these day, due in large part to the low ticket price ($30 a pop) and the presence of Mary-Louise Parker, returning to her Off-Broadway roots and giving her best stage performance in over a decade.

In Georgie -- a pathologically lying American living in London -- Parker has found a role exquisitely tailored to her particular strengths. We first meet her in a train station, where she's embarrassed herself by kissing the neck of a complete stranger, an Irish butcher named Alex (the extraordinary Denis Ardnt). You see, she momentarily lost herself, thinking Alex her late husband. She poignantly explains how much she misses him, tears held perfectly in her eyes. Moments later, she confesses that she's never been married.

After the chance meeting, Georgie continues to insert herself in Alex's life, alternately exasperating and beguiling him. She appears at his butcher shop, not looking to buy any meat. She makes confessions as quickly as she retracts them. The writing places Georgie perilously close to stereotype -- the audience could as easily be annoyed with her as Alex sometimes is -- but Parker's finely wrought work helps accentuate the character's seductive and sensual elements. Parker has never been a particularly sexy performer, despite playing sexualized characters; here, when she asks Alex to bed, you never question whether it's something she would do, or what the outcome would be.

Arndt is an actor primarily seen in California and West Coast regional theater. If the Lortel Archives are accurate, this production represents his first foray onto the New York stage in nearly thirty years. Let's hope the next interval isn't so lengthy, because he is a revelation. Playing against an actor as plugged into the text as Parker cannot be easy, yet Ardnt's Alex matches her step for step, and he manages to be just as spontaneously surprising as his co-star. Together, they comprise the most kinetic couple on the New York stage.

[$30 full price ticket, fourth row audience right]

How'd We Do? Show Showdown Tony Predictions Wrap-Up

This post discusses the accuracy of the predictions we made here at Show Showdown. Suffice to say that none of us should leave our day job and go into fortune-telling. Mind you, we did all get Curious Incident for best play, Fun Home for best book, and Helen Mirren for best actress in a play. We may not be Nostradamuses, but we are awake! (And I'm not going to point out the ones where we were all wrong.)

Fun Home wins Best Musical, proving that it takes a village
(of extremely talented people)
Photo: Sara Krulwich

The "total right" stat at the bottom of this table is a little unfair, because not all of us made predictions in all the categories (hence the empty cells). The numbers in parens after the "total right" numbers are how-many-right-per-how-many-predicted stats.

Our correct predictions are highlighted.

	Cameron	Liz	Sandra	Wendy
Best play: Curious Incident	Curious Incident	Curious Incident	Curious Incident	Curious Incident
Best musical: Fun Home	An American in Paris	Fun Home	An American in Paris
Best revival of a play: Skylight	Skylight	Skylight	Skylight	You Can’t Take it With You
Best revival of a musical: The King and I	The King and I	On the Twentieth Century	The King and I	On the Twentieth Century
Best book of a musical: Fun Home	Fun Home	Fun Home	Fun Home	Fun Home
Best original score: Fun Home	Fun Home	The Last Ship	Fun Home	Fun Home
Leading actor in a play: Alex Sharp	Alex Sharp			Alex Sharp
Leading actress in a play: Helen Mirren	Helen Mirren	Helen Mirren	Helen Mirren	Helen Mirren
Leading actor in a musical: Michael Cerveris	Robert Fairchild	Michael Cerveris	Ken Watanabe	Michael Cerveris
Leading actress in a musical: Kelli O’Hara	Kristin Chenoweth	Kristin Chenoweth	Leann Cope	Kristin Chenoweth
Featured actor in a play: Richard McCabe	Richard McCabe			Micah Stock
Featured actress in a play: Annaleigh Ashford	Annaleigh Ashford	Annaleigh Ashford		Annaleigh Ashford
Featured actor in a musical: Christian Borle	Brad Oscar	Andy Karl	Christian Borle	Christian Borle
Featured actress in a musical	Ruthie Ann Miles		Sydney Lucas	Judy Kuhn
Scenic design, play: Bunny Christie and Finn Ross, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	Wolf Hall	Bunny Christie and Finn Ross, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time		Bunny Christie and Finn Ross, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Scenic design, musical: Bob Crowley and 59 Productions, An American in Paris	The King and I	The King and I	The King and I	The King and I
Costume design, play: Christopher Oram for Wolf Hall Parts One & Two	You Can't Take It With You	The Audience		Wolf Hall Parts One & Two
Costume design, musical: Catherine Zuber for The King and I	On the Twentieth Century	The King and I	The King and I	The King and I
Lighting, play: Paule Constable for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time		The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Lighting, musical: Natasha Katz for An American in Paris	The Visit			The King and I
Direction, play: Marianne Elliott for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	Marianne Elliott for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	Marianne Elliott for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time		Marianne Elliott for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Direction, musical: Sam Gold for Fun Home	Sam Gold, Fun Home		Christopher Wheeldon, An American in Paris	Casey Nicholaw, Something Rotten!
Choreograpy: Christopher Wheeldon for An American in Paris	Joshua Bergasse, On the Town	Christopher Wheeldon, An American in Paris	Christopher Wheeldon, An American in Paris	Christopher Wheeldon, An American in Paris
Orchestrations: Christopher Austin, Don Sebesky, Bill Elliott for An American in Paris	John Clancy, Fun Home	Rob Mathes, The Last Ship	Rob Mathes, The Last Ship	Christopher Austin, Don Sebesky and Bill Elliott, An American in Paris
Total correct	13 (13/24)	12 (12/19)	9 (9/16)	15 (15/23)