THEATRE'S LEITER SIDE

Sunday, January 18, 2015

138. Review of THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET (January 15, 2015)

"Parting Was Not Such Sweet Sorrow"

Just as memories of two ill-fated revivals of Shakespeare’s tragedy of young love—one on Broadway and one Off—have begun to fade, along comes yet another earnest but similarly unsuccessful attempt to bring this beautiful play to life. Unlike its predecessors, each of which featured a movie star—Orlando Bloom on Broadway, Elizabeth Olsen Off—the current version, given by a company dubbed Shakespeare in the Square, employs a cast entirely made up of unknown young actors who started their ambitious venture as a club when they were students at NYU; they're now in their fifth season, although this is my first encounter with them. The Square in their name, of course, would be Washington Square Park, just across the street from their present venue in the Judson Gym, where they’ll open an outdoors staging of their next shot at the Bard, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (another play with a surfeit of local stagings), in April.

Elise Kibler, Taylor Myers. Photo: Erik Choquette.

Director Dan Hasse has made some bold choices, one of which is to stage an uncut version of the text after comparing the 1623 Folio version with later editions and removing the “errors” that crept in, among them the attribution of “Parting is such sweet sorrow” to Juliet, rather than Romeo. Even more daring (but also more foolhardy) is the decision to do this challenging material with only five actors, each of them playing multiple roles. For example, Taylor Myers not only plays Romeo, but also covers Lady Capulet and the tiny roles of Sampson and Anthony, while Elise Kibler handles Juliet, Benvolio, Friar John, and a servant role. Jack De Sanz’s five roles include the Nurse, Friar Lawrence, and Montagu; Chris Dooly’s duties embrace not only Tybalt, but Paris, the Prince, Lady Montagu, and so on; and Constantine Malahias has the job of doing Mercutio, Capulet, and two minor roles. Without truly versatile and experienced actors, however, the result is anything but a coup de théâtre. The task isn’t impossible, though, as a four-actor version of HAMLET by the Bedlam Theatre (who did the same with ST. JOAN) recently demonstrated.

Taylor Myers, Constantine Malahias. Photo: Erik Choquette.

Would that the care for authenticity that went into restoring the script had gone into other elements of the production. The everyday, and not particularly interesting, street clothes provided by costume designer Liz McGlone remain essentially unchanged, no matter which character is being played, apart from minor adjustments or additions. When the trimly muscular Romeo, dressed in tight black jeans and a gray wife-beater, changes to Lady Capulet, he dons a bustier and black skull cap, but otherwise remains the same. Caps, scarves, and the like help a bit to differentiate the roles, but if you don’t already know the play, you’re likely to be at sea determining who is who. There's nothing in this poor man's WEST SIDE STORY world to visually suggest wealth or privilege. Shakespeare’s own productions may have used relatively few scenic units, but they were notable for the splendor of their costumes, often being the gifts or castoffs of the nobility.

From left: Jack De Sanz, Chris Dooley, Elise Kibler. Photo: Erik Choquette.

The dullness of the costumes is replicated by Phil Falino’s set, a neutrally colored arrangement of simple platforming surrounded by the audience of about 50 seats and fronted by a plain, off-white mat spotted with what look like dirty footprints. An imaginative lighting design might have compensated for the blandness of the set and costumes, but for some reason, Timothy Meola’s lighting allows the night scenes to be played in near darkness. While the effect of people running around in the gloom with lanterns can be momentarily effective, it simply will not do to let actors deliver long speeches entirely, or almost entirely, without illumination. During the balcony scene, Juliet stands at a height, framed by a hanging frame to denote a window, while Romeo, down below, might as well be the Invisible Man. Similarly, the speech by the Prince that concludes the play is delivered by an actor standing a foot or two from a small pool of light, while he himself is so shrouded in shadow he could have phoned in his lines.

Taylor Myers, Elise Kibler. Photo: Erik Choquette.

The actors are eager and, in other plays might find success; unfortunately, most are simply not up to the task of playing Shakespeare, at least as required under the demands of this approach. Perhaps inspired by Shakespeare’s famous line about “the two hours traffic of our stage,” not actually spoken in this version, they race through the script, completing it in around two hours and 35 minutes (including a 15-minute intermission), consistently eschewing subtlety for the obvious, especially when angling for a laugh. I must admit that the small audience present responded enthusiastically to their efforts, almost giving the impression, at least in the first of the two acts, that this was more a comedy than a tragedy.

There’s no attempt to speak the lines for their poetic values, the emphasis being on sounding as colloquial and everyday as possible. This often helps make the lines more comprehensible, but too many lines are muffled. Most difficult to hear (confirmed by my guest, a young high school English teacher) was Ms. Kibler, whose weak projection isn’t helped much by the pace at which she gabbles. Hopefully, she’ll raise the bar when she makes her Broadway debut this spring in the revival of THE HEIDI CHRONICLES.

Shakespeare in the Square as a company (38 members are listed in the program) appears to be chock-full of energy, spirit, ambition, and determination. There’s a sweet and upbeat vibe when you enter their space. It's their intention to make this into a “rowdy,” immersive event, with lots of audience participation, in order to recreate the atmosphere of an Elizabethan production. The cast sings to musical accompaniment in a sort of pre-show mini-concert, and there's more of the same during the intermission.

A small number of audience members are recruited to stand around (looking uncomfortable) during the ballroom scene when Romeo first meets Juliet, and there's also the occasional pointing to people in the audience as a way of underlining something mentioned in the dialogue. But I doubt you'd find the atmosphere rowdy. Perhaps this kind of thing works better and more consistently out of doors than it does in Judson Gym, and perhaps the company will succeed not only in being rowdy but also in being more theatrically effective their next time out.

THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET

Gym at Judson

55 Washington Square South, NYC

Through February 8

Friday, January 16, 2015

137. Review of A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN NOVEMBER ON THE BANKS OF THE GREATEST OF THE GREAT LAKES (January 13, 2014)

"A Savory Play in January on the Boards of Stage II at City Center"

From left: Gerry Bamman, Mia Katigbak, Nina Hellman, Brooke Ishibashi, Heather Alicia-Simms, Jessica Almasy, Christian Felix. Photo: Heather Phelps-Lipton.

Playwrights have long recognized that one of the most effective ways to explore the dynamics of interaction among friends and family members is to gather them at someone’s home for dinner. Not infrequently, dinner in such cases happens on holidays like Christmas or Thanksgiving, the annual eating and greeting rituals when families, no matter how far they’ve scattered, come together for mutual gobbling, guzzling, gabbing, and griping. Kate Benson’s tasty concoction, A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN NOVEMBER ON THE BANKS OF THE GREATEST OF THE GREAT LAKES, is the most recent addition to the Thanksgiving canon, joining other recent examples such as The Pensacola Commons and Jericho.

From left: Heather Alicia-Simms, Nina Hellman, Brooke Ishibashi; above: Ben Williams, Hubert Point-DuJour. Photo: Heather Phelps-Lipton.

Dinner—or its preparation, at any rate—is the gravy lubricating this imaginative New Georges production, produced at City Center’s Stage II in association with the Women’s Project. First seen last year in a more limited run at Dixon Place, for which it received near universal huzzahs, the production has returned with most of the original cast. I imagine it will again warrant widespread praise, but I’m not quite ready to give it a Michelin star. A BEAUTIFUL DAY is an offbeat work that not everyone will swallow easily; there was at least one early departure when I attended, which is a shame because, apart from an ambiguous ending, there’s a lot here to savor.

From left: Christian Felix, Jessica Almasy, Brooke Ishibashi, Mia Katigbak; above: Ben Williams, Hubert Point-DuJour. Photo: Heather Phelps-Lipton.

Ms. Benson, yet another product of Brooklyn College’s remarkably successful MFA playwriting program, imagines that the Wembly family is assembling for their annual feast at the shore-front Great Lakes home of one of three middle-aged sisters, whimsically named (as is everybody), Trifle (Nina Hellman), Cherry Pie (Heather Alicia Simms), and Cheesecake (Brooke Ishibashi). What makes the otherwise unexceptional event exceptional is the premise that the dinner is viewed as a competitive sports event, a metaphor that director Lee Sunday Evans catches handily and runs with, scoring a theatrical touchdown. (The conceit is reminiscent of Woody Allen's 1972 movie, BANANAS, which opens with sportscaster Howard Cosell commentating on a Latin American revolution, and ends with him doing the same at the consummation of a marriage.) She’s assisted by flawless, perfectly timed teamwork from an ethnically diverse—and thereby universal—ensemble.

The actors generally speak Ms. Benson’s juicily bite-sized lines, with their built-in stumbles and repetitions, directly to the audience rather than to each other; their heightened delivery seems as precisely scored as the specifics of their movements. Each step in the preparation for and execution of the big meal is carried out in perfectly choreographed, almost dance-like staging; although considerable attention has been paid by costume designer Kathleen Doyle to the quirky yet perfectly character-defining clothes everyone wears, there are no props or furniture at all, everything (including the huge turkey being roasted) being suggested through mime, sometimes literal and sometimes fanciful. It's a far cry from James A. Herne's 1892 play, SHORE ACRES, when a full holiday dinner, bird and all, was cooked and eaten during the performance.

From left: Gerry Bamman, Mia Katigbak, Kristine Haruna Lee, Jessica Almasy, Christian Felix, Heather Alicia-Simms, Nina Hellman. Photo: Heather Phelps-Lipton.

Sara C. Walsh’s clever setting has the general appearance of a basketball court, with complex floor markings denoting mapped-out strategy patterns. Upstage is a high, paneled wall containing a door, and a large glass window through which a wall with old-fashioned wallpaper is visible. Above is a windowed room in which two sportscasters, using microphones, observe and comment on the goings-on below, including moment by moment decisions, and even facial expressions.

Instead of names, the sportscasters are designated as # (Ben Williams), who does the “action,” and @ (Hubert Point-DuJour), the color commentary guy; both are new to the production. As they describe the play-by-play, they also engage in occasional banter expressing their own competitive natures. Their dialogue, like that of most sportscasters, is sprinkled with references to the weather and scenery, and there are laugh-worthy memories of Thanksgiving past disasters, like “the Gravy Boat Episode of 1979.” Various sports are alluded to, but football seems the predominant image as we move through four quarters of action in 75 intermissionless (halftime is over almost before it's begun) minutes.

We watch as the three sisters struggle to assemble a large, round table, worrying if there’s enough room for everyone; discover that Cherry Pie’s divorced daughter, Gumbo (Christine Haruna Lee), “a bit of a wildcard . . . who could really foul things up,” as one announcer says, has changed her plans about not coming; and hear the front door buzzer signaling the arrival of the relatives, among them the grandparents, Grandada (Gerry Bamman) and SnapDragon (Mia Katigbak), he nearly deaf, she recently blind, and a slew of granddaughters, their partners, their children (including twins), and a horde of great grandbabies (unseen); 13 of these characters are played by Jessica Almasy and Christian Felix, although just who they are at any moment isn’t always clear.

Things really get hairy when the turkey and its stuffing are being prepared, each move of which is analyzed by # and @ for its gamesmanship and skill, with Grandma SnapDragon showing her mettle in the clutch when disaster threatens. After all the mishaps and fuss, dinner is rapidly devoured, at which point the play, already surrealistic, shifts to a much more bizarre level with an unexpected absurdist conclusion concerning the army of great grandbabies that you'll find either devilishly pertinent or head-scratchingly puzzling.

A BEAUTIFUL DAY, while never truly hilarious, invokes many chuckles, and you’ll probably grin a lot while watching it. Still, the one-joke concept, like the turkey, does tend to dry out after a while, and you'll have to taste it for yourself to see if Ms. Benson's ending is a desert worth waiting for.

A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN NOVEMBER ON THE BANKS OF THE GREATEST OF THE GREAT LAKES
Stage II at City Center
131 W. 55th Street, NYC
Through February 7

Thursday, January 8, 2015

136. Review of DYING FOR IT (January 7, 2015)

"Not to Die For"

There’s a definite timeliness to this generally unexciting revival of Soviet playwright Nikolai Erdman’s (1900-1970) historically important political satire, whose title has been changed by British adaptor Moira Buffini to DYING FOR IT from the much better-known THE SUICIDE (Samoubiitsa). It was under the latter name that I saw this tragic farce when it appeared on Broadway, starring Derek Jacobi, in 1980.

Its timeliness comes not so much from its subject matter—which pokes fun at the repressive Soviet government under Stalin—but at the circumstances surrounding its production history. Attempts to stage the play by both Vsevelod Meyerhold and Konstantin Stanislavsky were stopped by Stalin’s censors in 1932, and the playwright himself was arrested and exiled to Siberia from 1933 to 1936. When he returned he wrote principally for feature and animated films. In 1969 a Swedish world premiere led to the play’s receiving international recognition; the script had been smuggled from Czechoslovakia, where a planned 1968 production had been halted when Prague was occupied by Soviet troops. In 1982, after productions in Germany, England, Canada, and the United States, THE SUICIDE received its Moscow premiere, but was closed down after only six performances. By 1987, however, perestroika had ushered in a more liberal atmosphere, and the play soon was being staged all over the Soviet Union.

I saw DYING FOR IT on the day when Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine, was murderously attacked by Muslim extremists who were reportedly disturbed by cartoons they found offensive. This made it impossible to separate the performance from its relation to the problem of free expression, so basic to our Western notions of democracy, most recently in the news because of a movie making fun of North Korea’s leader. America itself, of course, has its own history of repressive censorship, examples of which continue to emerge on the local, if not the national, radar.

Ms. Buffini’s is actually one of at least nine English-language adaptations of Erdman’s play; it changes the title but remains attached to the world of 1920s Stalinism, with its location in a ramshackle, multi-floored, decrepit tenement shared by disparate characters. A number of changes have been made to Erdman’s script, itself the subject of numerous revisions, including greatly reducing its length (the play runs two hours), using only a single location, and eliminating various characters, including Erdman’s original “suicide” (the person, not the act) referred to in the title but now omitted from the dramatis personae.

Semyon Semyonovich Podeskalnikov (Joey Slotnick) is a poor, unemployed, clueless, self-centered schlub living with his wife, Masha (Jeanine Serralles), who supports him, and his pest of a mother-in-law, Serafina (Mary Beth Peil). They occupy what is essentially a hallway space because they can’t afford a room of their own. Depressed about his inability to find a job, Semyon cooks up a harebrained scheme to teach himself to play the tuba so he can make a living, but when it goes bust, he decides to kill himself, obtaining a pistol for the purpose. A neighbor, the strapping Alexander Kalabushkin (CJ Wilson), aware of Semyon’s plan, decides to capitalize on it by taking money from a string of unhappy persons who think they can use Semyon’s suicide to further their own aims. Semyon is happy to profit from what transpires.

These colorful stereotypes include the intellectual, Aristarkh Dominikovich Grand-Skubik (Robert Stanton), an opponent of political tyranny; Viktor Viktorovich (Patch Darragh), a poet seeking artistic liberty; Father Yelpidy (Peter Maloney), a lecherous old priest hoping for religious empowerment; Yegov, the postman, who wants to exploit Semyon's death in the interests of his ideology; and a hooker named Kleopatra Maximovna (Clea Lewis), called “Kiki,” on behalf of romanticism. Each wants Semyon to write a suicide note stressing their specific cause. Then follow the farcical events connected to Semyon's anticipated suicide. Subsequently, a lot of the action takes place around a coffin, there’s an ironic ending, and, despite its title, the play turns out to life-affirming.

Throughout, many unsayable things about Marxism and the Soviet government are aired, cautiously by most but candidly by Semyon, the nebbishy Everyman who has nothing to lose. Even today, one winces at some of these comments, knowing the Kremlin’s ruthlessness. Given the naughty things Semyon says, it’s surprising that Erdman got only three years of exile for his outspokenness. (His sentence may have been softened by Stalin’s fondness for JOLLY FELLOWS, a movie Erdman had written.) I suspect, though, that the many middle-aged Russians attending (the lobby and basement lounge were buzzing with Russian chatter when I went) will find the play dated.

DYING FOR IT, to use its current title, is the kind of experimental European play that made Russian theatre of the late 1920s world famous. Its association with the leading experimentalist, Meyerhold, who staged Erdman’s The Warrant in 1924, reflects its avant-gardism. Neil Pepe’s production, however, despite the fiddler and accordionist who introduce the play with vivid Russian tunes, also performed between each scene, inclines toward the drably realistic. Walt Spangler’s imposing tenement set is filled with dreary details, including peeling wallpaper, and both David Weiner’s lighting and the costumes of Suttirat Larlarb and Moria Clinton heighten the sense of a bleak time and place.There's little here that suggests Meyerhold’s iconoclastic theatre (he was arrested in 1939 and executed in 1940).

The acting, while energetic, is no more heightened than that in, for example, the current revival of YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU. Unlike the comic conviction of the cast in that production, however, the actors in DYING FOR IT struggle to invest their characters with truthfulness. Some (like the always reliable veterans, Mr. Stanton and Mr. Maloney) are more engaging than others, but the overall tone is forced and artificial. In this ensemble’s mouths, Ms. Buffini’s colloquial language (including the “f” word) has that ersatz quality so typical of translated plays. When the audience laughed, it often seemed more dutiful than organic.

DYING FOR IT remains intellectually and historically interesting. This earnest, hardworking production, however, lacks the conceptual inspiration that might have given it life.

DYING FOR IT
Atlantic Theatre Company
Linda Gross Theatre
336 W. 20th Street, NYC
Through January 18

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

135. Review of HORSE GIRLS (January 6, 2015)

“Ride On, Lady Jean Ladies, Ride On!”

Oh my God, you guys, like you’d really better get down to the Cell Theatre to see this new play if you want to spend some time with some awesome cool girls who are like so into horses their motto is “Boyz May Come and Boyz May Go But Horses R 4Ever”!

Jenny Rachel Weiner’s amusing little black comedy, just this side of sketchdom, closed on December 19 but has now reopened to run until January 23. It takes you into the hearts and souls of seven horse-loving tweeners, exposing their prepubescent fixations and verbal and physical tics with pinpoint accuracy. The plot goes a bit south in the last 15 minutes, but enough charm has been stirred up by then to keep you engaged even when all credibility has flown. If the piece ran any longer than its just-right 50 minutes, I’d have begun itching to put my feet in the stirrups and gallop off down West 23rd Street.

From left: Olivia Macklin, Angeliea Stark. Photo: Hunter Canning.

The setting is the girly-girly bedroom (well designed in the tiny Cell space by Daniel Geggatt) of the wealthy Ashleigh (Olivia Macklin), 12-year-old president of the Lady Jean Ladies, a suburban Florida club passionately devoted to the art of equestrianism. Trophies, in the form of statuettes and ribbons, abound, since Ash, whose family owns the adjoining Lady Jean stables, is a champion rider. Ash, once fat but now a sleek blonde with carefully tended tresses that her friends vie to have the privilege of French braiding, sits tall in the saddle, dominating her friends with the carefully calibrated methods of a classic mean girl manipulator.

From left: Anna Baryshnikov, Eleanore Codron, Olivia Macklin, Angeliea Stark. Photo: Hunter Canning.

The other kids come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and hair styles and colors, including the brunette Tiffany (Angeliea Stark), the club’s 13-year-old vice president, Ash’s best friend and closest competitor, and the only other girl who owns a horse; Robin (Maddie Sykes), Tiff’s chubby sister, who serves as the secretary; 12-year-old, braces-wearing Margaret (Karley Ronayne), tall, gawky, and inclined toward human fillies; 12-year-old Brandi (Katie Lawson), bespectacled club historian, with a mouth on her; 13-year-old Camille (adorable blonde Mariah Lee, understudying Anna Baryshnikov, daughter of you know who), who brings her 13-year-old cousin, Trish (Eleanore Condo), along to the meeting. The roundish Trish, from a liberal Manhattan family, provides, through her various expressions, an outsider’s bewildered, skeptical perspective on the goings on.

The gathering, with its jealousies, hazing, and group rituals, reveals how the girls jockey for favor and toady with power. As in the recent Punk Rock, when unsupervised young folk get together in a play, Lord of the Flies is never far behind. Making the girls’ love for horses the thing that ties them together—horses, of course, can be seen as a sublimation of prepubescent sexual desire on a level with whatever pop singer young girls are obsessing over—allows playwright Weiner to set up a situation that brings the girls’ frustrations to a boil. This happens when Brandi, 20 minutes late for the meeting, bursts in with the horrible news that the stable and its horses are being sold, with the animals to be turned into horse meat.

From this point on the play’s heightened comic realism begins to merge with farcical surrealism. It’s easy enough to buy the girl’s hilarious attempt to ask Ann Romney, whom the girls revere as a patron saint, for help by trying to reach her through Michelle Obama at the White House, but when an eruption of violence leaves the stage littered with—well, let’s just say it’s not horse meat—you can be excused for thinking Horse Girls needs to be reined in. Still, there’s a bizarre poignancy to the final moments as Ash, alone under a disco ball with her hair blowing in the wind, struggles to sing Mariah Carey’s “Forever” to a karaoke accompaniment.

Director Sarah Krohn does a terrific job in creating an ensemble of enjoyably believable maidens, all excellently played by actresses in their twenties. Each (aided by the pitch-perfect costuming of Siena Zoë Allen), is clearly defined, with her own quirks and habits; as expected, there’s a surfeit of declarative statements ending in upward inflections. The girls’ phantasmagorical reaction to news of the horse’s fate, done under strobe lights, is effective, but something similarly stylized seems called for when the (rather pale) gore begins to flow.

Much as Horse Girls sometimes seems like parodistic fluff, along the lines of an extended SNL bit, its strengths and weaknesses were enough to spark a lively discussion with my guest as we sat on the subway afterward. That’s what good, even if imperfect, theatre should always do. Ride on, Lady Jean Ladies, ride on!

Horse Girls

Cell Theatre

338 W. 23rd St., NYC

Through January 23