A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream may be William Shakespeare's most indestructible play. The plot is so solidly silly, the characters' desires and dreams so clearly etched, that the show is always fun. I have never seen a boring Midsummer Night's Dream; unfortunately, I've also never seen an ideal one. In many cases the weakness has taken the shape of a movie or TV star who simply lacks the chops to do Shakespeare. For example, a production years ago in California featured Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Loretta Divine, both of whom are fine performers, but both of whom just couldn't pull off their roles.

In the current, highly entertaining production at the Classic Stage Company, imaginatively and clearly directed by Tony Speciale and nicely choreographed by George De La Peña, the marquee names are Bebe Neuwirth and Christina Ricci. Both are game, attractive, hard-working, good-humored, and not that good. While they handle the physical demands of their roles beautifully, neither expresses the music of the dialogue--or sometimes even the meaning.

The rest of the cast, however, ranges from good-enough to quite good, with Anthony Heald leading the cast with two distinct and excellent performances, one as Theseus and one as Oberon. Jordan Dean, Nick Gehlfuss, and Halley Wegryn Gross do well as Lysander, Demetrius, and Helena, respectively. Taylor Mac brings much energy and humor--but perhaps too much shtick--to the roles of Egeus and Puck; it's one thing to casually toss off "Lord, what fools these mortals be" and another to dump it in the trash.

In many ways, the true stars of this production are Speciale, De La Peña, set designer Mark Wendland, costume designer Andrea Lauer, lighting designer Tyler Micoleau, and in particular, fight choreographer Carrie Brewer, who has staged as funny and convincing a scene of extended slapstick as I have ever seen (kudos too to Ricci, Dean, Gehlfuss, and Gross for their energy, bravery, and physical skill). The show is visually enchanting, from falling leaves to evening lights to very attractive, albeit gratuitous, semi-nudity. The whole audience gets to experience the dream.

This is not the ideal production I hope someday to see, but it is an extremely pleasurable evening in the theatre.

(tdf ticket; first row, extreme, extreme side)

A Streetcar Named Desire

In contrast to, for example, Liv Ullman's version of A Streetcar Named Desire (or David Cromer's or Edward Hall's), Emily Mann's version respects and serves the play. It is clear and straightforward and largely well-cast; it allows the beauty and sadness of Tennessee Williams' brilliant piece to come through. In brief, it is excellent. (Note: this review assumes a preexisting knowledge of Streetcar; if you want to avoid spoilers, go no further.)

Nicole Ari Parker, Blair Underwood
Photo: Ken Howard

First, let's get the whole multi-culti casting thing out of the way: the actors' races are pretty much irrelevant. What is relevant is their classes, and here we have one of this production's few flaws. Daphne Rubin-Vega's Stella never lived at Belle Reve, the DuBois estate in the 1940s; this Stella grew up in a small apartment in a not-so-great neighborhood in the 1980s. It doesn't help that Rubin-Vega's accent comes and goes and that her performance is largely awkward and unconvincing.

Blair Underwood brings a level of elegance to Stanley that is also not quite right for the part, but his performance is strong and moving, and it's easy to extend suspension of disbelief his way. I did however have to occasionally remind myself that Stella had supposedly "married down"; in this production Stanley seems, well, classier than Stella.

Wood Harris is unusual casting as Mitch, again for reasons having nothing to do with race. Mitch is traditionally overweight and a bit shleppy. Harris is thin and attractive, but his presentation of Mitch as an awkward, nerdy guy works well. His Mitch is gangly, all arms and legs, and genuinely sweet. It's a nice performance.

Which brings us to Nicole Ari Parker as Blanche. Any Streetcar lives or dies by its Blanche, and Parker is superb. Her Blanche begins confident, with flashes of vulnerability and fear, and loses her bravado bit by painful bit as her last-chance refuge turns perilous. Parker's Blanche is fully realized, worthy of sympathy yet obnoxious and annoying, manipulative yet somehow loving, self-centered but also self-aware.  Her descent into madness is well-calibrated and heart-breaking.

This production is also well-served by the supporting cast and Mann's use of them. The between-scenes' depictions of New Orleans are their own entertaining playlets. The "flowers-for-the-dead" woman is genuinely creepy. Aaron Clifton Moten as the teenager who Blanche semi-seduces offers a perfect combination of awkwardness and willingness to have this adventure.

In addition, Terence Blanchard's music sets the mood perfectly, although I missed having a distinct, rinky-tink piece of period music to represent Blanche's final dance with her young husband. The set by Eugene Lee and costumes by Paul Tazewell are just right. The lighting by Edward Pierce is marvelously evocative, and when Mitch insists on really seeing Blanche, the light from the bare bulb is a devastating flash of lightning.

Another thing that must be discussed is the audience. As has been reported elsewhere, Underwood's truly gorgeous chest is indeed greeted with hooting and hollering. However, by the last fourth of the show the night I saw it, the audience was largely quieted, aware that what was going on was no laughing matter. By the time of the rape, the audience felt appropriately horrified. I wonder if the blocking and/or costuming was changed to make sure that Underwood was not seen topless again.

Any Streetcar cast necessarily has wrestle with ghosts. Marlon Brando's "Stella!" is iconic, and while Blanche's "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers" is not associated with any one performer, it is well know to the point of cliche. A sign of the excellence of this production is that these moments are completely successful. Underwood's "Stella" is less the bellow of a wounded animal and more a genuine regretful neediness; it's even a little sad. And Parker's "kindness of strangers" is a heart-breaking moment of complete surrender.

Because Mann chooses an approach that serves the play, and because the show is largely well-acted, this is a well-balanced Streetcar. The characters make sense, even at their worst. Blanche is snotty and a pain-in-the-ass, but she is also trapped in the wrong time and place and damaged beyond repair. Stanley is violent and mean, but Blanche really does turn his life upside down. Before she arrives, he and Stella are happy together making those "colored lights"; Blanche takes away their privacy, is condescending and rude, and drives a wedge between them. Stanley's rape of Blanche is not about sex; it is about reclaiming his turf. It is awful, it is unacceptable, but it is not incomprehensible. And Stanley's decision to tell Mitch the truth about Blanche is completely fair and reasonable, even while being thoroughly destructive of two people's lives. Oddly enough, though Blanche is completely dishonest with Mitch, I think she might have made him happy. Tennessee Williams wrote a complex play about people's strengths and weaknesses and desires crashing together and causing irreparable damage; Mann's production presents every complexity.

On perusing the reviews, most of them based on performances a week or so earlier than the one I saw, I found myself wondering if perhaps this production took a few extra days to hit its stride. With the exception of comments on Rubin-Vega, who unfortunately remains weak, the other criticisms seemed to be of a different play than I saw. There's no way to ever know, of course. Not only is each performance of a play different and unique--the true glory of theatre--but the performance we each see is also colored by our different seats and beliefs, personalities, and lives.

All I know for sure is that the Streetcar I saw was the real thing.

(third row on the aisle; press ticket)

Lonely, I'm Not

Lonely, I'm Not; bored, I am. Paul Weitz's new play at Second Stage isn't awful, it's just awfully empty in its exclamatory presentation of Porter (Topher Grace), a once-vicious, work-obsessed man who has spent the last four years recovering from a nervous breakdown, failed marriage, and current depression. Trip Cullman, rarely the most subtle of directors, only adds fuel to this fire by blaring the titles of each abbreviated scene in neon signage that is both behind and a part of Mark Wendland's set. The final product ends up feeling more like the cover of a magazine, flashy and colorfully designed so as to lure the reader in, than it does like a substantive address on the human condition.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

From the sound of it, Nice Work If You Can Get It is setting itself up from failure: classic Gershwin songs harshly bolted onto a Prohibition-era farce that's adapted by Joe DiPietro from work by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse. Confidence is inspired by director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall, fresh off of Anything Goes, and her leading lady, the do-anything Kelli O'Hara, but there's still that disclaimer-like "if" haunting the title. Rest assured, however, that the result of this "new" musical is nice work -- actually, pretty damn wonderful work. DiPietro has as firm yet playful hand here as he did with Memphis, the songs are more than merely soldered on -- they're actually often comically playing against the original context -- and David Chase's arrangements are terrific (see the dueling "By Strauss" and "Sweet and Lowdown"), and Marshall's direction is quick, lively, and above all, fun, with lots of storytelling stuffed into the extended dance sequences.

The single rough patch rests in this entire affair rests on Matthew Broderick's weary shoulders: he looks bored to be playing yet another variation on Leo Bloom -- he's now a rich simpleton -- and his arms are so stiff that it appears he's trying to bring planking to Broadway, particularly in comparison to full-bodied performers like Michael McGrath, Jennifer Laura Thompson, Robyn Hurder, Chris Sullivan, and Judy Kaye.... I don't ordinarily fall head-over-heels for such airy entertainment -- especially not two-and-half-hours worth -- but Nice Work If You Can Get It has me humming away on cloud nine. Perhaps it's hard to get work these days; at least this musical's making it easy to play.

(Press ticket; N105)

Clybourne Park

It's unprofessional of me, I know, but at a certain point in Clybourne Park, I stopped taking notes. I was just so enjoying Bruce Norris's overlapping dialogue -- lines that would be contentious if the characters bothered to acknowledge one another (they're not supposed to) -- that I allowed myself to get lost. Which winds up, of course, being the sucker-punching point, in that it's necessary to remove oneself from the language to realize just how tangled up we are in the prejudices of the past. Stepping back from the indignation, the thoughtless disrespect, and the ever-present specter of racism, one sees the people who are really at the heart of these issues, how these two irreconcilably different households are actually one and the same, and how "community" is little more than an artificial construct: a fence that we choose to erect among those who are "like" us and those who are not.

[Read full review here]
(Press ticket; L108)

The Columnist

It's not hard to see what attracted David Auburn (Proof) to a historical subject like Joseph Alsop. The twenty odd years covered by The Columnist (1957-1978) were tumultuous ones for America, and Alsop (played here by a tightly wound, ever-graceful John Lithgow) represents a case study in the transition from one era to another, as ambitious journalists like David Halberstam (an earnest Stephen Kunken) and youthful idealists like his step-daughter Abigail (normally played by Grace Gummer; I caught her fine understudy in the role) begin to contest and supplant his domineering hold on "facts," particularly when it comes to Vietnam.

But the reason for columnists in the first place is that facts alone (sadly, in many cases) do not convey a story, and Daniel Sullivan's staid direction makes The Columnist a rather boring affair -- Good Night and Good Luck as opposed to Frost/Nixon. I suspect audiences who lived through these times may find the historical resonances more compelling, even though they're so artlessly thrown in our faces (unlike, say, the far more thrilling and subtle Mad Men). But I doubt that'll be enough to overcome the dramatic inertia of The Columnist, a play that feels as alive as newsprint and about as timeless.

[Read full review here]
(30 Under 30 ticket; Balcony Seat A9)