Straight White Men

It's weird to say this about a play that premiered only four years ago (at the Public), but the revival (and first Broadway production) of Young Jean Lee's Straight White Men feels outdated and a little forced. Some of the problem, at least when I saw it, lay with what I assume was a heap of backstage disruption. Initially--and presumably all through rehearsals--Ed, the father character, was played by Tom Skerritt, who departed the production due to what were described as personal reasons just as previews began. Denis Arndt stepped in, only to quit just as abruptly, citing "creative differences." By the time I saw it--and despite the fact that Arndt was still on the marquee and in the program--Stephen Payne had assumed the role. He did fine, especially considering the circumstances, but the show as a whole felt a little sluggish and unsure of itself. I'm sure it's gotten faster and punchier, but the rapid-fire energy that shows like these demand hadn't quite locked in yet.

The bigger problem, however, has to do with the play itself, especially in relation to how it's being sold to audiences. Straight White Men comes off as remarkably conventional, despite what seem like doth-protest-too-much attempts to market it as dark, edgy, and more challenging than it actually is. I was waiting--hoping, maybe--for something pulse-quickening, or at least something to take home and chew on for a few hours after the lights came up, but what I got was a domestic comedy that didn't build much, and that ended with a message that was driven home repeatedly from the start.

A play about straight white men is all well and good--lord knows, they're so very well and good that they just keep on getting produced, all the damn time, everywhere you can possibly look! Sure, putting such specimens under a microscope and observing them from a studied distance is hardly a ludicrous exercise: step one of fighting the patriarchy, after all, is acknowledging that it's not a glorious, universal ideal--just a dumb old social construct that's as bound up with behaviors, codes, expectations and mores as any other, even if it does just happen to rule the universe. Lee's play--which in this production literally frames its straight, white, male characters behind a gigantic, stage-wide picture frame that labels them as such--points out how deeply social constructs are ingrained, even among men who have been schooled about their own enormous cultural advantages.

But...still. The gist of Straight White Men feels obvious from the outset: Three grown, white, educated, affluent brothers and their white, educated, affluent dad get together for Christmas (mom, who encouraged her boys to push against white male supremacy, has died). The brothers are reasonably successful, with the exception of the oldest and most well-educated. Despite his Harvard degree and graduate school credentials, Matt has moved back in with his dad, and now spends his time running errands, cleaning the house, and working a series of menial temp jobs. Spoiler alert: woke as they like to think they are, the rest of the men don't think this is the kind of stuff Matt is supposed to be fulfilled by, and they are very upset and bothered by his choices.

This central, driving issue doesn't so much build as get inserted between all manner of activities men tend to engage in. Through three mini-acts, the brothers, sometimes along with dad, play video games, roughhouse, dust off childhood nicknames, get drunk, reminisce, eat Chinese takeout, bond, bicker, dance, put on matching pajamas, and judge each other's choices. At a scant 90 minutes, the piece still feels too long and repetitive for what it says and how it says it. There is an attempt at further distancing the main characters by having them introduced and occasionally manipulated by two unnamed characters, one non-binary and one gender fluid (Kate Bornstein and Ty Defoe, respectively; the charming T.L. Thompson was in for Bornstein when I saw the show). These two characters address the audience for a few minutes at the very start of the production, but the added framing device feels less illuminating than it does inadvertently insulting: they are way more dynamic and engaging than the characters who get most of the stage time, and yet for all their energy, wit, and dynamism, they are almost immediately--and ultimately, just so typically--sidelined...so that the audience can watch a standard-issue domestic comedy about a stage chock full of dudes.

I can imagine that Straight White Men seemed comparatively fresh in 2014, before all the shit that's gone down in the four years since. Still, it hardly struck a chord in the summer of 2018. At this point, I suppose I'd rather have the chance to learn more about the two unnamed characters that appear for about five minutes at the top than I would to spend another modicum of energy--and certainly another ninety minutes--on people who dominate daily discourse, control basically everything, and are currently driving our nation into the ground. Sue me if I'm missing something here.

When not breathlessly insisting that Straight White Men is super innovative, edgy, and dark, its marketing has been celebrating the fact that it's the very first play by an Asian-American woman to be produced on Broadway. Wow, OMG, how progressive! Way to go! Give yourselves a slap on the back, forward thinkers! Seriously, now, it's great that Broadway is trying to diversify--it's 2018, for fuck's sake--but could the choice of play in this particular case be any more disappointing? Lee has become known in less intensely commercial centers as a highly innovative, challenging, genre-shifting and disruptive playwright. I'd have loved to see something on Broadway that backs this reputation up, but I suppose that's too much to ask.

Please hear me on this: I most certainly don't begrudge Lee herself. A gig's a gig, and Broadway is as big and shiny and wonderful a gig as any playwright is ever going to get in this country. This being said, I hope mightily that Lee gets to show up there again, next time with a play that disrupts, challenges, upsets and complicates in at least a few of the ways she's become known for. I hope as much for a lot of playwrights from a lot of backgrounds, who continue to get little or no representation in the commercial realm. For now, though, there's something pathetic about a production so eager to celebrate its landmark status and its edgy, challenging darkness....by not being remotely edgy or challenging or dark at all, but instead by furthering the careers of some already well-established white dudes and focusing entirely on what Broadway has always embraced, while insisting that this time, it's totally different. It's not.

If you want to take your smitten-with-Armie-Hammer tween to see Straight White Men, by all means, go for it; they'll likely want to wait eagerly at the stage door after the show to see if he'll emerge, pose for selfies, and accept all the peaches fans seem to be presenting him with. But I assure you: this is as edgy and challenging as things are gonna get.

Art Times: Theatre Vs. Theater: Does It Matter?

My latest essay is up at Art Times:

When I was in college, one of my fellow students was Broadway producer David Merrick’s assistant/gofer, which made him a big deal in the Queens College Drama Department. He and I were once discussing whether to use theater or theatre, and he said that we have to use the re version because it’s more special than er and we have to honor that theatre is more special than anything. I was 18 and I agreed with all my heart and I’ve been using theatre ever since.

[read more]

The Blue Room

When David Hare's The Blue Room with Nicole Kidman was on Broadway in 1998, it seemed a thin and cliched story about sexual encounters. The Bridge Production Group at The WhiteBox Art Gallery tries to reinvent this loose adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen (also a 1950s French movie, La Ronde) by performing it a small, basement art gallery, where costumes hang in the universal restroom and on a rack within the audience's view. The action unfolds inches from the audience making the piece more voyeuristic and disquieting. 

The 10 vignettes tell a circular story that attempts to show how class and power impact sexual encounters - we have a prostitute and her client; an au pair with the boss's son, the politician with his young paramour. Most of the tales focus on the unequal power between men and women - especially rich, influential men and their lovers. But the stories fall into shallow cliches - and the play's discussion about sex never amounts to more than a casual conversation. It's too bad Hare's adaptation resisted  including a few more strong women - it might have created a more vivid, original play.

The Bridge Production Group's Artistic Director Max Hunter directs Christina Toth (Annalisa in "Orange is the New Black") and himself in a multitude of hook-up scenarios. While both ably communicate a variety of characters, only Toth finds the visceral core of each. Hunter shows disdain, swagger and callousness but he never touches the vulnerability that Toth discovers, especially in the more damaged individuals.

Costumes challenge the smoothness of the production since, like the original, changes are mostly done in front of the audience. Sometimes the dresses fall off Toth or something is turned around with the tag showing. Rather than offering insight into the individuals portrayed, such moments just seem sloppy (costume design by Nicolle Allen). Bulky, too, are set changes - as a folding couch is made into a bed or a coffee table is added. The slight set design could be pared down even more.

The projection of countdowns and imagery aids the storytelling - with the light, sound and movement amplifying the sudden ending of scenes and relationships (lighting and projection design by Cheyenne Sykes). Like the Broadway version neon often lights the set adding a seediness to the encounters. A sign detailing the time each tryst takes makes the audience laugh, but becomes monotonous after the fourth or fifth pairing.

Max Hunter and Christina Toth.
Photo credit: Callum Adam

The Blue Room plays at The WhiteBox Art Gallery (329 Broome Street between Bowery and Chrystie Streets) until July 29. Shows are Wednesday and Thursday at 7 p.m.; Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. and Saturday, July 21 and 28 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $30 at www.bridgeproductiongroup.org.

The performance is approximately 90 minutes.

Mary Page Marlowe

Six women play Mary Page Marlowe, the titular protagonist of Tracy Letts's 90-minute one act at Second Stage Theater. I imagine that developing the show was a fascinating experience for the actors, who went to each others' rehearsals and developed the character together. (They discuss their process in an interview in the New York Times.) The experience must have been particularly amazing for Tatiana Maslany, who has gone from playing some dozen women in Orphan Black to playing one sixth of a woman here. Unfortunately, the process doesn't translate into anything wonderful or distinct for the audience. In fact, under the damped-down direction of Lila Neugebauer, the entire show comes across as monotone. It's as though she thought that the only way to get six women to meld was to eliminate their personalities and individual quirks. (The set is monotone as well, and a bit off-putting.)

Marcia DeBonis, Tatiana Maslany
Photo: Joan Marcus

In addition to the unique casting, Mary Page Marlowe is steadfastly non-chronological. Breaking chronology can be an excellent device if the thru line of the play has its own growth and development. But Mary Page Marlowe doesn't. Instead, the mixing up of time periods seems only a way to add spice and suspense to a garden-variety story.

The combination of multi-casting, monotone, and non-chronology keeps the audience at arm's length. It doesn't help that sometimes we see only a performer's profile for an entire scene. Was Maslany good in the therapy scene? I don't know. I never saw her face.

Mary Page Marlowe feels like a terribly missed opportunity. It hurts to see such a large and wonderful cast (18 people in a one-act play!) given so little to do.

Wendy Caster
(tdf ticket; row L)
Show-Score: 50

My Fair Lady

The revival of My Fair Lady at Lincoln Center is much like other Bartlett Sher revivals of musical theater chestnuts at Lincoln Center: it is colorful (if, this time around, more dimly lit); it is respectful to the text without insisting on remaining totally rooted to the past; and it is, for the most part, lovely, enjoyable, and satisfying.

Joan Marcus

A few things about it that stay with me and that I figure I'd mention:

1) Much handwringing over (a) this particular musical being revived at this particular time and (b) the subtle changes made to its finale took place during the preview period, but I think both were ultimately for naught. You either like My Fair Lady or you don't. You can either overlook its sexist implications enough to enjoy the piece, or you can't. If you can, and you enjoy the musical, my guess is that you'll enjoy this production of it.

Further, you'll either appreciate the subtle nods the production makes to cultural shifts that took place during the Edwardian era (the tweak made to the conclusion; the brief appearances of marching suffragettes or crossdressing choristers), or you won't. But nothing the production does makes much of a difference, ultimately: Higgins is still a pompous twit and pretty much everyone knows it; Eliza is still smart and driven and pretty much everyone knows that, too. They'll end up together or not, but then, that was always the case. 

2) The idea to have a younger Higgins and an older Pickering was, at least as I see it, a far more ingenious and daring move, since it shifts the power dynamic so totally. Alan Corduner's Pickering is a devoted scholar who is kindly, paternal, and patient with both Higgins and Eliza. Harry Hadden-Paton's Higgins is by equal measures arrogant, entitled, and deeply insecure about his own intelligence, while still managing to remain far more appealing than he deserves. I've known plenty of both types of academic dudes, and the pairing here makes absolutely perfect sense to me--as does Eliza's desire to knock Higgins down a few pegs as often as possible, even as she benefits from him. He deserves it; she needs to do it to retain her sanity while achieving the goals she's set for herself.

3) An added bonus: Hadden-Paton can sing, unlike Rex Harrison, who defined the role despite the fact that he not only couldn't, but was incredibly cowed by that fact. If, like me, you've listened--and even pattered along--to Harrison's "Why Can't the English?" thousands of times through your life without ever once realizing that the damn song actually has a melody, you're in for a real treat.

4) Discussion of this show usually gravitates so quickly and so overwhelmingly toward the gender aspects that it's easy to forget how very much the musical says about class distinctions and their discontents. Of course, gender and class are intertwined--in the world as in this musical--but still, I appreciated being reminded here that there's so much more at play than the basic "two old bromancy white dudes remake a young woman to their exacting standards, take all the credit, and eventually she falls for one of them" plotline everyone always fixates on.  

5) Norbert Leo Butz long ago won my heart, so it's not like he had to work terribly hard here, but damn if he's not typically awesome in this. Also, kudos to the costume department for the truly bizarre aviator cap he shows up in early in act I, which to me was kind of worth the price of admission.   

Log Cabin

Jordan Harrison's annoyingly didactic Log Cabin presents characters who come across as op-ed essays rather than humans. There's a gay couple and a lesbian couple who have done well in the world and are enjoying the benefits of legal marriage. There's the trans man who argues that he is more oppressed than the others are and offends the gay couple by calling them cis males. There's the trans man's girlfriend, a young woman who is somewhat pansexual but has a thing for trans men. And there's the lesbian couple's infant, who doesn't speak in real life but is amazingly articulate in the minds of his moms. (He speaks at one point without either mom there, which takes his speech out of imagination and into magical realism, but, whatever). A good 95% of what these people say is pedantic, and even intra-couple squabbling is forced to represent some point or other rather than being specific and personal. The scene changes are excruciatingly slow, and the sex scene is unpleasant. There are some funny lines; some of the performers are quite good; the show is rarely boring. But it is mediocre at best.

Wendy Caster
(member ticket; second row)
Show-Score: 55