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Playwright extraordinaire August Wilson wrote a masterpiece of exploration of the human soul in Fences. People in it struggle against the quicksands of life in the 1950's in Pittsburgh.
Donald Margulies' Collected Stories is a literate play about literate people, a professor/author and a graduate student, performed by two fine actresses: the veteran Linda Lavin who has both a sense of the dramatic and great comic timing as the strengths and weaknesses of her character gradually emerge, and the very talented, quite beautiful Sarah Paulson as an ambitious young writer whose youthful talent resonates with the mature, well-known writer/professor.
White's Lies, by Ben Andron, now on Theater Row, is a shallow, but kind of fun, sex comedy. It takes shots at being funny, and there are some laughs. The leading man, played by Tuc Watkins, who is built like the proverbial brick shithouse, is a conscienceless bastard in his mid forties, still preying on young women (who find him irresistible) and leaving a trail of them in his dust. So his mother is dying of cancer and wants a grandchild. That sets the action in motion.
Jon Marans' The Temperamentals is a fascinating historical examination of the start of the gay movement to fight for acceptance in the 1950's by the designer Rudy Gernreich and his partner Harry Hay. The five-member cast features a powerful Thomas Jay Ryan as Harry, an elegant Michael Urie as Rudy, and the versatile trio of Arnie Burton, Matthew Schneck and Sam Breslin Wright playing many parts each. The acting is first rate, the dialogue crisp, and, as directed by Jonathan Silverstein, this biodoc is a captivating theatrical experience.
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, written and directed by Alex Timbers, with music and lyrics by Michael Friedman, is 18th-Century history done in rock and roll played in 19th-Century melodrama style with Brechtian influences. It's full of creative physical activity and jokes and songs in a psychedelic, anachronistic view of events. It's full of comic shtick and surprises and stands on the shoulders of Monty Python.
Oh Boy! What a Show! Million Dollar Quartet, with book by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux, gives us the masters: Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, performing their best-known songs at the one actual recording session at Sun Records with all four of them present in 1956.
John Logan's play about the painter Mark Rothko, Red, under Michael Grandage's direction, performed by two outstanding actors, Alfred Molina as Rothko and Eddie Redmayne as his helper, is quite interesting as a piece of intelligent theatre full of ideas about Art and The World. The painter's studio set by Christopher Oram has a dramatically realistic flavor, and lighting by Neil Austin supports the play as the action moves.
Next Fall by Geoffrey Nauffts starts as if written as a sit-com, with a punchline every minute, and the audience seemingly so conditioned by television laugh tracks, they grin, titter and chuckle on cue. But the jokes are good ones, so a lot was justified, and I laughed too. Then we get to the core of the play and find that it has moral, spiritual and social issues, particularly: can you be gay and a Christian?
Against the bare brick walls are a huge screen for projections, flats, costumes on a rack, groups of lights. All are movable, as are insets from the sides. A stagehand mops. Surely, this is a backstage show. The professional is interspersed with the personal story of theater and film star Ginger Rogers.
All begins well, too, in Alabama Shakespeare Festival's fairy tale-magical version of Shakespeare's on-the-edge comedy, All's Well That Ends Well. Opening on Peter Hicks' classic tiered Shakespearian set with staircase, Rossillion spills forth characters comic, but somewhat darkly so. Carole Monferdini's dignified Countess of Rossillion exhibits her concern for son Bertram who's about to leave home, her ward Helena, and her sick King.
Sarah Ruhl, like Beckett and other modern absurdist dramatists, requests a doubleness of us: to see that her world is simultaneously not quite real yet very real.
Wendy Graf's powerful family drama, Behind the Gates, goes behind the walls of Mea Shearim, the Orthodox Jewish enclave outside Jerusalem's Old City. The Haredi live here, fanatical Jews who adhere strictly to biblical law and customs and who consider themselves to be above the laws of the secular and democratic state of Israel. A nation unto itself, Mea Shearim demands that its men wear black frock coats and fur-trimmed hats, its women cover themselves from head to toe and live in complete subjugation to their husbands.
In The Glass House, June Finfer explores ideas and concepts in architecture and in morality, giving us the most interesting work on the subject since Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead." Fictionalizing the work of actual innovative architects Mies van der Rohe, (played by Harris Yulin, an actor with great presence and total immersion into the character - every moment is real and believable) and Philip Johnson (played by David Bishins, whose gravelly voice makes George C.
My notes on the five one-act plays in Series A of this year's Marathon at Ensemble Studio Theater. The first two plays are about discomfort:
Safe by Ben Rosenthal, directed by Carolyn Cantor, is a crude play about crude, quirky people: a young insecure man and his gruff stepfather, crudely acted (by Gio Perez and Danny Mastrogiorgio) with a bright phrase here and there. Each actor stays on one basic note, with one shift.
The Talking Band's new production, New Islands Archipelago, written and directed by Paul Zimet, has the feeling of a band of old-time Mummers in this performance-art piece taking place on a cruise ship. This is high-level theater in all aspects with an accomplished cast who act, sing and dance. All the characters are odd, but all the actors, including Todd D'Amour, James Himelsbach, Kristine Haruna Lee, Bianca Leigh, Ellen Maddow and Steven Rattazzi, are totally believable. It's an
Tony Award-winning French singer Yvonne Constant in Paris in the 60's and 70's at the Metropolitan Room, 34 West 22nd Street, is indeed an older woman, but she has the energy, verve and the body of a forty year old. It must be a secret known only to the French. Her alto voice still carries the tune, and her charisma pours out as she sings and tell tales. She delivers - in a collection of songs both familiar and new to me - with atmosphere, with a history of French songs by the best those decades offered, all delivered by a master of the medium.
Roundabout Theater has an Off-Broadway winner in Gordon Edelstein's acclaimed production from New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre of Tennessee Williams' groundbreaking and haunting memory play, The Glass Menagerie, which has received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination as Outstanding Revival of a Play.
The Blue Room, David Hare's adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen (literal translation, square dance) is indeed a dance -- a dance of sex in our time. The two actors in the play -- the highly skilled (and gutsy) Christina Dow and Christian S. Anderson -- play a multiplicity of roles in different scenes that unfold with cinematic speed and brevity, all of them having to do with sexual encounters of one kind or another. Hare's text requires them to make love in a variety of ways, some times half-clothed, other times completely starkers.
Swiss playwright Max Frisch's 1963 absurdist comedy, The Firebugs, gets a new translation and title by Alistair Beaton, a British playwright specializing in political satire. The Firebugs was set in 1950s Germany, but The Arsonists, we learn from the program, is set "somewhere in America -- or maybe Germany," and the time is described as "the 50s -- or maybe now."
All About Me, written by Christopher Durang and Barry Humphries (aka Dame Edna), starring Michael Feinstein and the irrepressible Dame Edna, is a great entertainment as these two stars, wildly opposite in tone, give us, in essence, two shows. Feinstein is a handsome, sweet, charming man who can open up his chops and fill the theater with his rich melodic voice as he sings Gershwin and other classics. Edna is a full-camp, outrageous, great comedienne whose crisp quips skewer everything in sight.
Come Fly Away, Twyla Tharp's ballet-based new dance creation, with elements of ballroom, modern, jazz and acrobatics, is clean, precise and full of beautiful, fully-stretched, strong, limber bodies that take Adagio to its adagioesque limits. Tharp has access to the world's best dancers, and here are a bunch of them. With grace, fluidity and a bit of Cirque, each dancer is superb. Especially outstanding are Charlie Neshyba Hodges with the body of a slinky and a comic flair, and the captivating Karine Plantadit.
Using records, visuals, and pop song hits and music, Roger Bean creates new musicals that draw upon and re-create phases of the American experience. For The Andrews Brothers, he starts with excerpts of broadcasts and touring shows, mostly hosted by Bob Hope. After a film of Kate Smith introducing "God Bless America," action begins on a South Pacific base during World War II. Before going to battle, the troops are to get a USO show that will feature the Andrews Sisters.
At his kitchen table, Bud (a "Big Daddy" of sorts) hears his sister, Marguerite, will be visiting to discuss religion with him. With a quiver, he promptly drops dead. The demise of this Dearly Departed results in his oddball family planning and attending his funeral services.
Suzana Stankovic has a lithe, strong, sinuous body exquisite in several forms -- ballet, modern, jazz -but her innovative dance storytelling is unique. She creates mood and atmosphere with her taut, muscular, very feminine dance and acting, all with sexual overtones.
Lissa Moira's new creation, The Seduction of Time, is a fascinating mixture of text (by Moira performed by her and Zen Mansley), music (by the nimble-fingered Chris Wade- at the piano), song (by a chorus of fine singers) and dance (by five women and one man who plays Time - choreography by Patrick L. Salazar and Harmony Livingston). They all explore a personification of the mythic relationship between Nature and Time as they mate. It's a mystical trip - an engrossing adventure in a fantastic surreal world.
Seth Barrish's style of directing his actors to be real and natural shines through in Phoenix by Scott Organ, a simply-plotted ninety-minute duo performed by the very attractive, very believable DeAnna Lenhart and Dusty Brown who are both able to convey subtle emotional changes and let deep feelings peek out. The interaction, some really cute banter, grows out of a past one-night-stand, and as the problem presented develops towards a solution, there are intellectual philosophical speculations and games as the two get to know each other and we get to know them.
Ovo, Cirque Du Soleil's new show now running on Randall's Island, is a mixture of its theme, insects, and the gymnastic, acrobatic and circus extravaganza that makes it the most popular live entertainment in the world. It didn't engage me until the super skills started to appear: marvelous synchronized foot-juggling, a lovely rope dance, the best El Diablo (two sticks, a cord between them, and spinning tops that fly) that I have ever seen, and then a couple of first-rate clowns as bugs. There's also a bag dancer you'll have to see to believe.
The Addams Family, with a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, is an absurdist musical with a moribund conceit performed by two superstars (Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth) a few subsidiary stars (Kevin Chamberlin, Krysta Rodrigues, Jackie Hoffman, Terrence Mann and Carolee Carmello) and a high-steppin' chorus of ghosts.
The revival of La Cage aux Folles, book by Harvey Fierstein, music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, starring Kelsey Grammer and Douglas Hodge, now on Broadway, is the epitome of Camp, with very little reality (until the end). Hodge is a great performer, but seems to be mocking the feminine character he is playing rather than being it. That he's lots of fun and a super mugger with great charisma nevertheless undercuts the real sentiment in most of the play. He is a great transvestite, a first-rate farceur, but almost never becomes a person.
American Idiot, music by Green Day, lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong, book by Armstrong and the director Michael Mayer, is an In-Your-Face (and Ears and Eyes) rock musical with an undercurrent of anger and rebellion. Though filled with references like The War now going on, it's fairly non-specific. The loose-limbed casual dancing seems to be singers dancing rather than dancers singing as it stays within the context of inept youth rebelling. The melodies are simplistic to a simple beat. I know, I know, they sold millions of albums.
At the start of Dying City, Manhattan war widow Kelly gets an unexpected visit -- during primetime TV viewing -- from the twin brother of her late husband, who died in Iraq just over a year ago. It's unexpected in several ways. For one, the visitor, Peter, is supposed to be onstage playing Eugene O'Neill stand-in Edmond in Long Day's Journey into Night, but he walked out at intermission. For another, Kelly has been avoiding all contact with Peter since the funeral of her husband, Craig, even skipping the play that opened six months ago.
I caught Noelle McGrath's cabaret show at the Laurie Beecham Theater downstairs from the West Bank Café. She's a warm, outgoing singer with a rich musical voice underlining a wry sense of humor. Her Bea Lilly impression doing Noel Coward is vividly comic. There is a terrific rendition of Randy Newman's "Sail Away," some Tom Lehrer, a lovely Irish ballad filled with nostalgia for the "Old Sod" and Kurt Weill's dramatic resonance.
The Red Fern Theater Company had an interesting fancy: plays that show how New York City might be in 30 years. They presents seven of them, each engaging in its own way, in +30 NYC - thru March 21 at Center Stage. There is a diversity of depths in terms of believability and reality in the writing and acting from trying to be funny as in a sitcom to a sense of truth. Most of the actors are quite good, and all are enthusiastic. But with seven writers and six directors, what's missing is consistency of style in performance.
The shows that work like a charm aren't the only ones that stick in our minds. For the past week or so, I haven't been able to stop thinking about Yank!, the deeply moving but highly problematic musical by brothers Joseph and David Zellnik that's now playing at the York Theater after years of development and at least two previous productions, one as part of NYMF and the other by The Gallery Players of Brooklyn.
Martin McDonagh is mad, poetic, outrageous, inflammatory, and sentimental as he pushes linguistic boundaries beyond Mamet in his A Behanding in Spokane, now on Broadway. Profanity splashes, sloshes and drips, inundating the stage with the crude images of lower class expression as a modern Diogenes , Christopher Walken, searches for the hand he lost forty-seven years ago. He is a perfect embodiment of McDonagh's irony, an actor with great subtlety in the nuances of his madness, which grows and amplifies into something beyond absurdity.
T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party is given a crackling-good presentation by The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) at the Beckett Theater on Theatre Row. How can this intellectual play, concerning commonplace domestic situations, written as poetry, crackle? With the fine cast, even the shallow banter at the beginning is intriguing and engaging as discussions become more complex in an ironic marital situation. There is a mystery, an exploration of psychiatric interpretation, descriptions and analysis of complex goals in life.
They were real -- those five corn-fed Cherry Sisters -- and they were really (apparently unknowingly) awful as a popular late 1800s vaudeville act that people went to see to yell insults and throw fruits, vegetables and whatever they could hurl.
Playwright Dan O'Brien in his The Cherry Sisters Revisited, the seventh and final full-length play in the 34th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, set himself a difficult task in bringing to life those poor deluded untalented creatures.
In American Tract, single mom Anne Jackson (Darlene Bel Grayson), an African-American nurse, inherits a house from the white man she looked after for many years. Located in the planned community of Park Circle, the house is a world away from the inner-city projects she called home for many years. Park City seems like paradise--until she and her two kids, Jimmy (Preston Parker) and Rodney (Larry "Bam" Hall), come smack up against the hidden realities of life in the lilywhite suburbs.
Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies is about the impact, physical and emotional, of the war in the Middle East on a couple and their relationship: a woman war photographer, the very strong and compelling Laura Linney, and a convincing writer/correspondent, Brian D'Arcy James. They're both terrific.
When the Rain Stops Falling, by Australian writer Andrew Bovell, is a dreary jigsaw puzzle of a play about a family's history in Australia and England, jumping back and forth in time, with much thunder and rain (powerful sound by Fitz Patton). It's hard to tell where some of the pieces fit in this inter-generational, angst-ridden play filled with shadowy figures fading on and off the stage as the tricky double-turntable set by David Korins does slow or fast counter-turns (and sometimes the actors do nothing).
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