Sylvia

Annaleigh Ashford garnered praise and a Tony nomination for her scene-stealing work in Kinky Boots; a year later, she walked away with the prize for her dizzyingly satisfying turn as Essie Carmichael in an otherwise banal revival of You Can't Take It With You. The occupational hazard of being a brilliant supporting performer is that one can end up fenced into the sidelines, never given the chance to shine in a leading role. And, of course, there are those whose talents don't translate to the ability to carry a production (I'm reminded of the usually wonderful character actor Michael Park, who floundered when tasked with leading Atlantic Theatre Company's revival of The Threepenny Opera). When it was announced that Ashford would headline the Broadway premiere of A.R. Gurney's sweetly funny 1995 play Sylvia, I found myself excited and trepidacious. Would her quirky comic style extend widely enough to cover this fairly substantial role? Or would it become clear that her gifts are best sampled in small doses?

I don't know why I worried. Ashford's Sylvia is a marvel, and one of the most ebulliently joyous comic performances I've witnessed in years. The role is tricky -- in case you didn't know, the lady in question is a an anthropomorphized dog -- and some of Gurney's humor can feel middlebrow. Ashford transcends any weakness in the writing, offering a master class in physical comedy, pitch-perfect timing, and even surprising subtlety.

Bound for Broadway XVI

Part of the yearly Broadway Close Up series, Bound for Broadway presents songs from new musicals that may or may not actually be "bound for Broadway" (only time will tell). Past shows that made the promised land include Avenue Q, Next to Normal, High Fidelity, The Drowsy Chaperone, It Shoulda Been You, and Now. Here. This. Also, a few shows have appeared Off-Broadway (e.g., Musical, the Musical and Murder for Two). This is not a high success rate considering that over 100 shows have been featured, but there is something sweetly aspirational about retaining the name Bound for Broadway. After all, as poet Robert Browning pointed out, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"

Bound for Broadway host Liz Callaway

This year's show presented four wanna-bes: The More Things Change, with book and lyrics by Kellen Blair and music by Joe Kinosian; LMNOP, with book and lyrics by Scott Burkel and music by Paul Loessel; The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen, with book and lyrics by Lezlie Wade and music by Daniel Green; and Amelie, with book by Craig Lucas, lyrics by Nathan Tysen, and music by Dan Messé.

The more interesting shows were LMNOP and Amelie. The press release describes LMNOP as follows: "When letters begin to fall from a monument in town, government officials ban them one by one. Chaos ensues until a determined teenage girl rallies the community to fight for freedom of speech. This unique musical is part romance, part clever word game and part adult fable that reminds us of how precious our liberties are; how quickly unbridled extremism can take them from us; and how important it is to have the courage to stand up for what we believe." The two songs presented had clever lyrics and were wryly inviting.

Cloud Nine

Cloud Nine, Caryl Churchill's brilliant riff on sexual politics, colonialism, identity, and love, is receiving an excellent revival at the Atlantic, directed with a sure hand by James Macdonald. As the Playbill explains, "Act I takes place in a British Colony in Africa in Victorian Times. Act II takes place in London in 1979. But for the characters, it is 25 years later." This is not the only device that Churchill utilizes. Women are played by men, and vice versa; a doll plays a baby; a white man plays a black man. Years before people wrote about "performing gender," Churchill made the concept unmistakably vivid.

Chris Perfetti as Betty, Izzie Steele as Ellen
Photo: Doug Hamilton

In Act I, Betty, the mother, Clive, the father, Edward, the son, Victoria, the daughter, and Maud, Betty's mother, live in Africa, where Clive happily and pompously takes on the "white man's burden." He sees himself as the adult in all situations, and the others, including Clive's "boy," Joshua, seem to agree. But Betty chafes under her limitations; Joshua is not what he seems; and Edward wants to play with dolls. Enter Harry Bagley, the dashing, and omnisexual, explorer, along with a "native uprising," and all assumptions start to fray.

Fool For Love

Sam Shepard's Fool For Love is a strange, searing play. Although it takes place in real time, in the stark and unforgiving Western landscape the author so often favors, one cannot shake the feeling that the play is part dream, part nightmare. Does the dusty motel room occupied by May (Nina Arianda) truly exist? Is her long-lost cowboy lover, Eddie (Sam Rockwell), recently returned from a long absence, a figment of her imagination? And who, exactly, is the old man (Gordon Joseph Weiss) who haunts the periphery?

The weirdness that can make this work thrilling also renders its execution beastly. The two central actors need to be in perfect syncopation; the play's single act (70 minutes) must unfurl at a breathless clip. The director must strike a delicate balance between realism and fantasy. Robert Altman took too heavy a hand in the 1985 film version, starring Shepard and Kim Basinger. When watched today, it comes across as an unintentional comedy. A 2006 London production starring Juliette Lewis drew poor reviews. What, then, would be the fate of its long-awaited Broadway debut, at Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, under the direction of Daniel Aukin?

Barbecue

Barbecue, Robert O'Hara's twisty, turny play at the Public, is a show I don't want to write extensively about for fear of giving any of the many Big Reveals away. So I won't say much of anything at all, except that the show makes me even sorrier than I was before to have missed Bootycandy last year. And that with Barbecue, O'Hara says a number of clever, layered things about race, class, representation, and the media. And that the play is very, very funny. And that the cast is, to a one, committed, appealing, and probably all loading up big-time on vitamin B and throat lozenges, what with all the wackiness and antics and herbal cigarettes and shouting (not to mention the occasional tasing). And that there is nothing more wonderful--or, goddamn it, more rare--than watching a play that treats all of its characters pretty equally--even if that means with equal amounts of snark--while sitting amid a truly diverse audience, the members of which seemed to take as much pleasure in the play as I did. Why is that so fucking hard?

Joan Marcus

I have a few--um--bones to pick about Barbecue: even with some of the Big Reveals in mind, the first act felt a little shrill, and in general, making the poor and uneducated the butt of extended jokes--however equally applied thouse jokes are--seems pretty cheap. But the ensemble work here is excellent--so is the direction and the set, which I dismissed as fairly dull at first and then somehow fell for midway through. And for my quibbles, the play's a genuine hoot. So if I happen to land on the most brilliant, deep, moving, and paradigm-shifting show at some point during my theatergoing adventures, I'll be sure to let you know. Meanwhile, Barbecue will do just fine.

The Christians

Lucas Hnath's The Christians, which has recently been extended through mid-October at Playwrights Horizons, is a compelling play about contemporary evangelical Christianity. It asks a number of interesting and complicated questions about religion as a means to unite and to divide, to connect and to alienate, to sustain and to harm. It also touches on the need for religions to grow and change in order to adapt to the contemporary world, and on altogether more earthly matters: building maintenance, membership numbers, mortgages, money. It is not a perfect play, but it is a very good one, which is worth seeing for the questions it raises, its conception and direction, its strong and committed cast, and its totally excellent megachurchy set.

Joan Marcus

At the start of the play, which begins with a few energetic (if seriously underharmonized) numbers by the church choir, Pastor Paul (an appropriately soothing Andrew Garman) delivers a sermon in celebration of his huge church's final mortgage payment. Professing a spiritual crisis that began when he learned of a boy who gave up his own life to save his sister from a burning building, he announces to his congregants that such a boy should not be damned to Hell because he was not a Christian. Even further, he informs them, he no longer believes in the concept of Hell and feels that no one in his congregation should, either.