Mercury Fur

I find it hard to believe that Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur -- written in 2005, but just now receiving its New York premiere, under the auspices of The New Group -- caused such ire upon its original London bow that the critic Charles Spencer to basically call Ridley a pervert and the author's regular publisher, Faber and Faber, refused to issue the text in print. After all, the play premiered a decade after Sarah Kane's Blasted, a truly unsettling piece that actually simulated rape, mutilation and cannibalism in full view. Horrible things are the purview of this dystopian drama, but the vehicle is almost entirely talk. The talk is laced with fucks and cunts, but it's hardly shocking on the language or the content level. The play portrays a post-apocalyptic world in which any fantasy can be bought for the right price; brothers Elliot (Zane Pais) and Darren (Jack DiFalco) facilitate these encounters and act as purveyors of the drug-du-jour, taken in the form of butterflies.

photo: Michelle V. Agins

I won't reveal the particular fantasy being bought in Mercury Fur, though other critics have. But I will say that by the time it becomes clear -- after nearly two intermissionless hours -- it's hard not to feel that the playwright hasn't earned the shock he's trying to sell. Ridley is obsessed with the minutiae of life in a dystopia -- surviving in a nightmarish landscape becomes just as boring as trying to climb the corporate ladder. But does his writing and the action that surrounds it (Pais and DiFalco spend much of the play's first half-hour cleaning an apartment, doing little else) have to actually be so boring in order to portray banality?

Although the acting is largely good -- Tony Revolori (late of The Grand Budapest Hotel) and Paul Iacono (apparently playing a cisgender woman, for reasons never fully understandable) are particular standouts -- the play never catches fire. And it never feels disquieting. The best works of art in this genre should make you question the darker aspects of your own society. That is something Mercury Fur simply doesn't achieve.

[discounted ticket, almost impossible to accurately describe my seat given the theater's current configuration]

The Flick

Not much happens in The Flick, but you probably know that already. The play's languid running time -- three-and-a-half hours, with the fist act clocking in at almost two -- and liberal use of silence caused a minor stir when it premiered at Playwrights Horizons, in 2013. The controversy was such at PH's artistic director, Tim Sanford, took the somewhat unprecedented step of actually writing an open letter to the company's subscribers to explain why he programmed the play. When Annie Baker's play went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama the following year, the award was met by cheers from some and eye-rolls from others. That award -- and the growing interest in Baker's works, with include the currently-running John (Wendy's and my reviews here) -- prompted a commercial return of The Flick, which is currently playing at Barrow Street Theatre in the West Village until January 2016.

photo: Joan Marcus

Like most of Baker's plays, The Flick is set in a somewhat crumbling corner of New England -- in this case, a run-down single-screen movie theater in Worcester, Massachusetts. The theater's claim to fame, if it can be described as such, is the presence of one of the last 35mm projectors in the state. This is the express reason why Avery (Kyle Beltran), a 20 year old cinephile on leave from college, decides to work there. His colleagues include Sam (Matthew Maher), a 35-year-old lifer who seems to hide a wellspring of sadness under his Red Sox cap, and Rose (Nicole Rodenburg), a mysterious, sexually vivacious projectionist. Over the course of the play, we watch these three enact the mundane indignities of daily life, from sweeping popcorn to threading projectors, punctuated by a healthy amount of movie trivia and hard-won personal revelations.

The Flick is not as grand and philosophically concerned as John; nor is it as precise as Baker's 2009 breakthrough play, Circle Mirror Transformation. It does, however, feature her most astute characterizations of human life. The trio of movie theater works -- a fourth actor, Brian Miskell -- plays two small parts -- regularly find profundity in minutiae, whether or not they realize it. The acting is unbelievably good, especially considering that Beltran, Rodenburg, and Miskell are only in their first week of performances. (The peerless Maher has been involved since the Playwrights Horizons run). Beltran especially puts a quivering voice and tender, expressive face to good use in projecting both Avery's savant-like cinema knowledge and deep-seeded self-doubt.

The Flick won't be for everyone. Large swaths of the audience at the performance I attended fled at intermission; many of the audience members who stayed allowed their boredom to give way to boorish behavior. (I also witnessed this behavior at John, which is similarly lengthy). I question whether these attitudes towards Baker's plays have less to do with her content -- even though the plays are long, and slow, they are fairly conventional -- and more to do with her style. My suggestion is that if you go to see an Annie Baker play, give yourself over to the experience. You might end up beguiled.

[Rear orchestra]

The Sound of Murder (book review)

Ivy Meadows (nee Olive Ziegwart) is an actress by night and a P.I. in training by day. Her current evening gig is The Sound of Murder, a Cabaret-Sound of Music mashup that I'd definitely go to see. In Ivy's day job, her Uncle Bob, who is also her boss, has her filing old paperwork while he does the actual detecting. But then recent widower Charlie Small commits suicide, and Ivy becomes convinced he was murdered. She decides to do some detecting of her own. Let's just say it goes less than smoothly.

Ivy Meadows is a likable, funny, hapless narrator. She goes too far, says too much, sticks her nose in where it doesn't belong, suffers from camel toe in her costumes, and kinda burns down her house. And, like any good narrator in a mystery series, she knows a lot of people who get murdered. But the mysteries are only part of the fun in Cindy Brown's Ivy Meadows Mystery series. (The first book in the series is Macdeath.)

Brown worked in theatre for years, and she gets the charm, craziness, ego, fear, silliness, and bravery of the people who make shows happen. She gives us the has-been star, the sometime porn actress, the diva with memory problems, the creepy womanizer, 60-year-old cheerleaders, and people who just can't help saying "Macbeth" out loud in a theatre. They're entertaining company.

Brown's books are well-designed cotton candy, page turners sprinkled with genuine character-based humor and delightfully bad jokes. I greatly enjoyed both Macdeath and The Sound of Murder, and I look forward to the next one.

(By the way, the Kindle pre-order price for The Sound of Murder is only $2.99. It's also available in paperback for $15.95.)

(reviewer copies)

Looking Forward: The 2015/2016 Season

The 2015/2016 theater season has already begun, with the much lauded Broadway premiere of Hamilton (and the less-lauded debut of Amazing Grace) and the first new shows of the Off-Broadway season -- Annie Baker's highly acclaimed John, which Wendy and I both greatly admired, for instance -- cropping up. However, like kids going back to school, we often associate a theater season with a calendar that starts in September and ends in June, with the Tony Awards. And looking ahead, this promises to be a busy and interesting year on the Great White Way and beyond. A particularly busy fall season -- by my count, nineteen plays and revivals opening or beginning previews on Broadway between September 1 and December 31 -- gives way to a spring that will host the likes of Audra McDonald, Jessica Lange, Ben Whishaw, Frank Langella, Sophie Okonedo, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Saorsie Ronan, to name just a few. Off-Broadway remains as vibrant as ever, with world premieres from David Lindsay Abaire, Michael John Lachiusa, Naomi Wallace, Danai Gurira, and Nick Payne on the docket, and appearances by Lupita N'yongo, Kristine Nielson, Mario Cantone, Mamie Gummer, Sherie Rene Scott, Dame Harriet Walter, and Holland Taylor.

To the folks at Show Showdown, the impending arrival of a new theater season makes us giddy as kids at Christmas. We're happy to each offer a brief overview of what excites us the most from the crop of upcoming shows.

Cymbeline--Words for Its Final Four Days

Three Reasons to Go See One of Shakespeare's Least Liked Plays

There are four days left to see Cymbeline, the second offering of The Public's annual Free Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theater. This flawed production (see Cameron Kelsall's excellent July review here) is worth seeing if you can get tickets (learn how to get tickets here).

One:
In the mid-August production I saw Lily Rabe (Imogen) was radiant, a fact I mention because some reviews dismissed her performance, calling her too "bitter" or that she "doesn't quite find access to the character’s radiant innocence and the pathos of her long suffering." Perhaps she grew into the role, but that night she gave a nuanced, rich interpretation of a character who changes drastically through the play, from a sweet innocent to a betrayed lover to an anguished mourner. Plus, her resonant, opulent voice is perfect for Shakespeare. Heck, it's fantastic for reading the phone book, too.

Two:
The other highlight of the show is Kate Burton as the Queen and the evil stepmother to Imogen. She brings the snarky out in a dark character who likes to play with poisons. Plus, she wears the show's only decent costume, a big, pitch-black hoop-skirted confection that makes you understand what Cymbeline, the King of Britain (Patrick Page, who also is solid in his role) sees in her. Like many of the actors, she plays a second character. Her Belarius, a banished lord from court, is not as compelling as the queen, but she does bring an emotional center to this rough-hewn back hills poser who, on one hand, fiercely loves the two boys she stole from the king and raised, and yet is someone who seethes with an underlying bitterness.

Three:
The original music by Tony Award-winner, Tom Kitt (Next to Normal, If/Then) strengthens the potency of some of the passages, allowing sweet or sorrowful notes to linger in the night air.

The final show in the Shakespeare in the Park series, The Odyssey, runs September 4-7 and will unite onstage professional actors with regular New Yorkers.

Photo credit: Carol Rosegg 

John

In her absorbing new play, John (directed by frequent collaborator Sam Gold), Annie Baker shows that there are many ways to be haunted and many ways to be in touch with the universe--but perhaps fewer ways to love.

Engel, Abbott, Smith
Photo: Matthew Murphy

It's the present. Jenny and Elias are staying at a bed and breakfast in Gettysburg, where Elias wants to see the historical sights and both want to work on their damaged relationship. They are haunted by one partner's past indiscretion, their childhoods, and even an American Girl doll. Mertis, known as Kitty, is the owner of the bed and breakfast. At first glance she seems to be kind of simple, even silly, but she isn't, and her relationship with the universe is unusually close. Genevieve, Kitty's blind best friend, speaks frankly of "the time I went crazy," explaining how her ex-husband took over her brain after their split, in the most intimate form of haunting. Genevieve's craziness was the literalization of heartbreak.