Preludes

Kyle Froman

Preludes, which has been extended through early August at the absolutely lovely Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center, is a dense and chewy musical that will not thrill everyone who sees it, but will certainly intrigue and challenge those with patience and an affection for postmodernism. An endlessly layered, circuitous, diffuse piece, Preludes is more intellectually challenging than it is warm and fuzzy. Riveting in some segments, quietly mesmerizing in others, and uncomfortably edgy in still others, Preludes comes off less as a straightforward musical than as an extended waking dream. This makes sense, since the show takes place in the hypnotized mind of the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. 

Fish in the Dark

Photo: Joan Marcus

Larry David may have left his hit play Fish in the Dark, but make no mistake: he's still up on that stage. And I'm not just referring to the fact that his replacement is his one-time television alter ego, Jason Alexander -- although that's certainly part of it. The role Alexander now inhabits -- Norman Drexel, a nebbishy, middle-aged Jewish man -- is little more than a David stand-in. But so is his wife, Brenda (the odd Glenne Headly) and his mother, Gloria (the always reliable Jayne Houdyshell). Norman's brother (Ben Shenkman, always a welcome presence) is supposed to be younger, richer, cooler -- nope. He's Larry David. Norman's maid, Fabiana (Rosie Perez, who barely acts), who harbors a secret you can smell a mile away: Larry. David. Even Norman's father, who speaks four lines before dying (a waste, since the fine Jerry Adler has the role), is Larry Fucking David.

But I guess that's what people paid upwards of $500 a pop for when the man himself was headlining. Full disclosure: I loathed Curb Your Enthusiam, David's screed of an HBO series that passed reprehensible behavior off as comedy for far too many years. And a lot of that "humor" inhabits this play, although I'd be lying if I said there weren't a few legitimate laughs. But the play itself is thinner than a dime, and the "twists" are about as expected as Kramer sliding uninvited through Jerry's apartment door.

I will say, though, that Alexander impressed me. A Tony winner for Jerome Robbins' Broadway, this replacement gig marks his first Broadway appearance in twenty-five years. (He's been active in West Coast theater, including several years as artistic director of the now-defunct Reprise series). Rarely have I seen an actor so confident in his ability to hold an audience in the palm of his hand. It's even more impressive considering that Norman is a pretty terrible role, written in such a way that a non-actor (which David firmly is) could succeed. I'm glad I saw him. He made me laugh. But if I'd paid more than rush prices, I would've felt somewhat cheated.

[$35 rush ticket, the most full-view box seat I've ever had]

Happy Days

In the first act of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, Winnie is buried up to her waist in a large mound of barren earth. In the second act, she is buried up to her neck. The mound of earth can be seen as life, or aging, or even just a mound of earth. No matter the interpretation, Winnie tries to make the best of it, carrying out her (limited) rituals, sharing her thoughts with a man we barely see whom she has clearly know for years (her husband? lover?), and being ever grateful when a day turns out to have a good moment or two. "Oh, this is a happy day," she says. She adds, "This will have been another happy day," as though to file it for the future when it will be a precious memory.

Brooke Adams
Photo: Joan Marcus

In the production currently at The Flea, directed by Andrei Belgrader and starring Brooke Adams and (her husband) Tony Shalhoub, Winnie chirps along, accentuating the positive and barely listening to her own words. Adams' performance is flat, with a largely monotonal presentation. She recites words rather than inhabiting them. (Full disclosure: the night I saw Happy Days, the audience gave Adams a standing ovation, so mine is clearly a minority opinion.)

[spoilers] 

The production as a whole doesn't listen to Beckett's words or else fails to examine the anguish behind them. It is a coarsened version of Happy Days, complete with masturbation and flying snot. Willie's reappearance at the end of act two is treated as slapstick rather than desperation. These decisions, while lessening the impact of the play, can be justified based on the text. Less justifiable is the moment when Winnie signals the audience to clap to try to entice Willie to sing. If Winnie is aware of the audience, than her isolation is considerably less isolated.

The Weir

Photo: Carol Rosegg

Irish theater values the act of storytelling as much as -- if not more than -- the story itself. The danger each playwright faces is that taken too far, this approach can feel like fetishization. Unfortunately, that's my impression of Conor McPherson's 1997 drama The Weir, which the Irish Repertory Theatre is reviving at its current digs in Union Square (the company previously presented this play -- with several of the same cast members -- two years ago). The play is little more than storytelling: in a remote Irish pub, the locals belt Jameson and Harp and indulge in spinning supernatural yarns they claim as true. McPherson is fascinated by the supernatural -- his plays The Seafarer and Shining City address the spirit world more directly -- and The Weir is a humanist attempt at a ghost story. It's also neither particularly poetic nor convincingly chilling. The actors give mostly fine performances, although more than a few line readings felt oddly tentative, and Amanda Quaid -- the lone woman, who shares the most disturbing story -- seemed young for her role. However, although only ninety-five minutes, Ciaran O'Reilly's production feels like a night where you stayed at the pub a few drinks past your limit.

[4th row, discounted ticket]

Equality!

Shows For Days

photo: Joan Marcus

The trickiest part of crafting a memoir is getting your very personal story to speak to something universal and recognizable for a wide audience. The best works of autobiography -- whether on the page (think Helen Keller's The Story of My Life or, more recently, Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking) or the stage (Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Glass Menagerie) -- burrow deep into their authors' most private, painful and significant life experiences to create work whose power supersedes the specific. In an era where memoirs are more ubiquitous than ever, it is becoming harder and harder to strike this balance.

Unfortunately, Douglas Carter Beane's Shows For Days (at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater) misses the mark by a wide margin. In telling his own story, Beane is so hyper-specifically focused on minutiae that you're left to wonder if the people he's writing about would care to spend time with -- much less recognize the humanity in -- themselves.