35. Review of SONTAG: REBORN

35. SONTAG: REBORN

Let’s be honest. How familiar are you with the writing of the late Susan Sontag (1933-2004), the prolific writer, activist, and public intellectual you may remember for the blaze of white hair across the front of her dark mane (some call it a “skunk stripe”). If you’re a Sontag fan, or are at least semi-conversant with her life and thoughts, you will probably love SONTAG: REBORN, a 75-minute, intermissionless, one-woman presentation of material carefully culled by Moe Angelos—the actress who convincingly plays Sontag—from the writer’s journals; these were edited by her son, David Rieff, as REBORN and AS CONSCIOUSNESS IS HARNESSED TO FLESH: JOURNALS AND NOTEBOOKS. If you know her as I did, as a cultural phenomenon of whom I was persistently aware but whose work never called to me, you will, perhaps, not love the content of this show so much. But whoever you are, it will be hard not to appreciate the considerable talent that the Builders Association and director Marianne Weems have put into producing the play at the New York Theatre Workshop.

            Sontag is seen both as her mature self and her younger self, the former in an almost hologram-like black and white video projection that overlooks the stage; as the smoke from her cigarette rises, the mature, sophisticated Sontag interacts, sometimes contentiously, with her optimistic but always questioning live and girlish presence, itself behind a scrim. The stage is dressed by designer Joshua Higgason primarily with a large desk and many books, as videos, seen on multiple transparent surfaces that occasionally overlap each other, provide the primary visual interest. Austin Switzer’s projection designs are among the most technically advanced I’ve seen, even in a time when projections are becoming a primary tool of theatrical design.

Angelos plays Sontag from 1947 to 1963 (or ages 15 to 31), and the years are ticked off by the video Sontag, who informs us of all the remarkable milestones in this brilliant woman’s early career: her teenage precocity while growing up in Sherman Oaks, California; her one-time meeting with Thomas Mann, when she stole a cigarette he was smoking; the schools she went to; the multiple degrees she acquired; the books she read and the writers she admired; the plays and movies she saw; her failed marriage of eight years to sociologist Philip Rieff, whom she wed ten days after she met him (when she was 19); the birth of her child, David; her lesbian affairs, notably with a woman named H she met at Berkeley, and the love of her life, painter-playwright, Maria Irene Fornes; her European travels; the New York Times’s dismissal of her first novel, BENEFACTORS, when she was 30; and the success of her “Notes on Camp” essay in Partisan Review, which finally brought her wide acclaim. We even see an electronically enhanced vision of her hand writing her journals, with the sentences magically illuminated as pen touches paper.

            The spoken content seems entirely to have been drawn from Sontag’s journals, so there are highly intimate revelations, such as her noting a time she masturbated and then examined her c—t, as she calls it, in the mirror. She was constantly judging her own work, about which she felt insecure, as well as that of others. But the play shoots out so many rapidly spoken nuggets of information and ideas that it becomes difficult to catch them all, and the effect, especially for those unfamiliar with the material, eventually grows tedious.

 

            Still, Angelos’s performance, while never overly showy (except when she captures the accents of Mann or Fornes), remains compelling; when Sontag’s comments register, they do so effectively, possibly inspiring some to want to seek out her work and get to know her better. But unless you are already a Sontag follower, I doubt that this play makes her writing and ideas scintillating enough to spark a rediscover Sontag movement. I remain content to have gotten whatever snippets of the writer I could from SONTAG: REBORN and let those more literarily inclined explore Sontag to their hearts' content.

34. Review of BASILICA (June 16, 2013)

34. BASILICA

 

Mando Alvarado’s BASILICA closed on Sunday at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, so these brief comments will neither help you decide to go or stay away. BASILICA, named for what is actually a famous Catholic church in San Juan, Texas, a largely Latino border town in the Rio Grande Valley, is about a dysfunctional family whose patriarch is Joe Garza (Felix Solis), a super-macho, boozing (but not womanizing) ex-high school football star who gave up a shot at college ball to do what he had to do by working as an auto mechanic to support his Jesus-worshiping wife, Lela (Selenis Leyva), and his kids. One child is a high school senior, Ray (Jake Cannavale), who struggles to defy his oppressively resistant father when he expresses his desire to go to Lake Forest College in far off Chicago, and the other is the 12-year-old Jessica (Yadira Guevara-Prip), whose “imaginary friend” disappears and who tries to get him back by putting on different religions as if they were the latest tweeners’ fad; at one point her preoccupation leads her to perform the ritual killing of a neighbor’s kitten. Thickening the guacamole is Joe’s bitter sister, Lou Helms-Garza (Rosal Colón), who wears spiked heels and leopard-spotted spandex pants to run the bar her grandfather started and who blames her problems on the abortion she once had, and Cesar (Bernardo Cubria), Joe’s married drinking buddy and coworker.

 

 

Cherry Lane Theatre

 

             Finally, there is Father Gil (Alfredo Narciso), once a local bad boy, now a handsome but self-centered priest, who returns to San Juan to become pastor of the Basilica, and turns into the catalyst that both brings redemption and causes tragedy to the Garza family. Father Gil, you see (and you would probably have spotted it coming not long after he made his entrance), is the biological father of Ray, after which development he left San Juan for Chicago, where he found God.

Joe, for all his awful excesses, sacrificed himself to raise a child that wasn’t his, a child he deeply loves, but one he is willing to condemn to the same dead-end life in the same dead-end town in which he himself chose to remain. He insists that the local state college, Pan-Am (apparently, the University of Texas-Pan American), is good enough for Ray. Talking of his own life issues, he’s likely to say, I dealt with it, so you can deal with it too. Or, “My father didn’t help me,” so why should I help you? Joe finds it impossible to accept that Ray might think himself better than himself, although this is likely because he bears a secret resentment about Ray’s not being his true flesh and blood.

Despite the character stereotypes, familiar situations, predictable and melodramatic developments (including what I thought the gratuitous death of a central character), and religious conflicts (Gil and Lela’s faith is balanced by Joe’s “there is no God” attitude) the play holds you in its grip through the conviction of its cast, most notably Felix Solis as the aggressively chauvinistic Joe, who keeps shouting at his son to “man up.”  Solis is not afraid to mine the character’s most unpleasant and even nasty attitudes because he also is able to explore the character’s inner charm, as when he playfully woos his reluctant wife into having sex with him. He is believably dangerous and authentically paternal. It’s a damned good job of acting. The other actors support him with conviction and believability; some critics have commented on Jake Cannavale’s inexperience (he’s the son of the dynamic Bobby Cannavale), but I thought his quiet, laidback, artistically inclined Ray (he’s also his school’s football team mascot), an excellent foil for Solis’s loudmouthed and hyperkinetic Joe.  When he does finally stand up to Joe, it counts.  

Four locales are squeezed by designer Raul Abrego onto the Cherry Lane’s miniscule stage. An alleyway cluttered with junk at audience left, the interior and back porch of a small house, a priest’s confessional, and a barroom at the right. A huge cross on the rear wall hovers over all. The action moves smoothly from one to the other under the effective direction of Jerry Ruiz, and the costumes (Carisa Kelly), lighting (Burke Brown), and sound design (Jane Shaw) all work in harmony to evoke the small town feeling of life among these working class people. When Father Gil delivers his homilies, he does so directly to the audience, looking spectators directly in the eye and accusing them of this and that. Entrances and exits are often made through the single aisle, which helps open the space a bit.  

BASILICA, for all its flaws, was better than many other works of the new season, and I’ll look forward to the next play from its promising dramatist.

              

33. Review of THE COMEDY OF ERRORS (June 14, 2013)

33. THE COMEDY OF ERRORS (June 14, 2013)

 

 

Shakespeare’s THE COMEDY OF ERRORS is back in all its clever mistaken identity silliness as the opening salvo in this summer’s two-play Shakespeare in the Park series (a new musical version of LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST will follow). Director Daniel Sullivan has found an appealingly satisfying, more or less contemporary world in which to set this cacophony of comic confusion by moving the action to the swing music era of the late 1930s and early 40s.  An atmosphere of rhythmic fun is established in a preshow boogie woogie display (choreography courtesy of Mimi Lieber) by a terpsichorean ensemble of half a dozen or so light-footed dancers; the same performers go on to serve throughout the show by moving scenic pieces off and on in splendidly choreographed bits that avoid the need to bring on intrusive stage hands. At the end of the play, they join the rest of the company in a final dance that perfectly captures the classical imperative to end a comedy with a scene of romantically-inspired celebration.

 

Outside the Delacorte Theatre.

            There are many other charmingly inventive moments in this generally enjoyable, if not always laugh-worthy revival, such as the idea of having the Duke of Ephesus (Skipp Sudduth) played as a Mafia don with a New York hoodlum’s accent, supported by gangster attendants who pull out their gats at the drop of a hat. Adriana (Emily Bergl), Antipholus of Ephesus’ wife, and her sister, Luciana (Heidi Schreck), are both blonde bombshells straight out of a screwball comedy starring Carole Lombard or Jean Harlow. When Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus take sanctuary in a priory, the abbess (Becky Ann Baker) and her nuns protect them with tommy guns. Dr. Pinch (Jonathan Hadary, who also plays the Antipholuses' father, Egeon) is portrayed as an eccentric, Viennese-accented shrink (“Ach du lieber,” he interpolates at one point), who attempts to psychoanalyze the straitjacketed Syracusan twins on his analyst’s couch. But the most challenging directorial choice is to have both the Antipholus and Dromio twins played by only one actor each. This requires some very fast maneuvers to allow the characters to enter a building on stage only to reappear only moments later from one of the vomitoria under the auditorium seating, but it also means some editorial script work to allow silent doubles with their backs to the audience to cover the concluding scene when all four twins must appear on stage together.

 

 

Jitterbugging dancers. Photo: Public Theatre

 

 

Heidi Schreck, left, and Emily Bergl. Photo: Public Theatre

 

            Sullivan has created lots of physical comedy to keep the action moving at an insistently energetic clip, and the actors are all up to the athletic demands of pratfalls that sometimes have them tumbling off the stage. But the effect throughout is to push every moment for comedic values, through both exaggerated line readings and broad gestures, as if this very talented director saw the need to cover weaknesses in the actors’ ability to be truly funny on their own. I've always felt that the funniest farce is that which makes you believe in the basic human desires of people trapped in impossibly complex situations; when the actors become more concerned with milking their lines and business for audience reactions than with evoking the humor in their dilemmas by combining full belief in what’s happening to them with innately clownish qualities, the effect is to point attention to their technique and away from their sincerity. Hamish Linklater, whose roles as the two Antipholuses require him to differentiate their essential natures despite their identical physical appearances, succeeds best at being both human and amusing, if not hilariously so, especially in the long, applause-generating speech he delivers toward the end as Antipholus of Syracuse when. But Jesse Tyler Ferguson, so delightful as one of the gay lovers on TV’s MODERN FAMILY, seems better suited to light, dry, self-effacing comedy than broad, slapstick farce, and his efforts in what should be the play’s funniest parts seem forced and inorganic.

 

 

Emily Bergl, left, Hamish Linklater and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, on couch, Jonathan Hadary, behind couch, and Heidi Schreck, right. Photo: Public Theatre

 

             A photo in the program shows the 1967 Central Park revival, which used three separate Italian Renaissance buildings set in a town square. A similar idea informs John Lee Beatty’s honey of a set, although the buildings, all of which are built on turntables to offer multiple views, are mid-twentieth-century American; one says Public Baths, another bears a poster for the 1933 Eddie Cantor movie ROMAN SCANDALS, and the third has a sign saying Adirondack Transit Lines, suggesting that the Syracusan twins come from the city of that name in upstate New York. Just as visually effective are the colorful period costumes of Toni-Leslie James; the silky dresses worn by Adriana and Luciana are especially delicious, and the way in which the similarly garbed twins are subtly differentiated by slight differences in their otherwise identical hats is cleverly handled. As usual for Delacorte productions, the lighting  (by Jeff Croiter) contributes its magical effects as the evening sky darkens and the audience’s focus increasingly turns toward the stage and away from the surrounding distractions of the park and itself. (I confess, though, wanting to murder two nearby spectators for continually checking their phones for messages!) Music, too, makes its valuable contribution , both the period pieces (such as Benny Goodman recordings) and original tunes, composed by Greg Pliska, including a jazzy “Hey, nonny, nonny” song delivered in soul singer style by the Courtesan (De’Adre Aziza).  

 

 

De'Adre Aziza. Photo: Public Theatre 

            While it is easy to enjoy the many bright ideas brought to its staging, the major error of which this comedy is guilty is its inability to be funny on a gut level and not a conceptual one. One can appreciate its goals but if you (or, at least, I) don’t react with authentic (as opposed to respectful) laughter, then the fun remains somewhere in your brain but not in your heart.    

 

 

 

 

        

32. Review of SOMEWHERE FUN (June 15, 2013)

33 SOMEWHERE FUN

 

 

The Vineyard Theatre, where SOMEWHERE FUN is playing, is definitely not what the title of this new play by Jenny Schwartz suggests. The actors may be having fun, especially veterans Kate Mulgrew, Kathleen Chalfant, and Mary Schultz, but for most audience members (admittedly, not all, if the occasional laughs are to be considered) even OEDIPUS REX might have been more amusing. At least it would have had characters you could identify with and understand, with language used for purposes of communication among the people on stage and with the audience. In Ms. Schwartz's surrealistic, absurdist world, language is used to demonstrate the impossibility of communication, but this devolves into a demonstration by the playwright of how cleverly she can handle it; despite the existence of mostly screwy characters and a sort of plot, none of it coheres long enough to keep you interested, especially when drawn out over three acts and nearly two and a half hours.

            The wonder is that the above-named actresses, and the rest of the mostly excellent cast as well, are so good at making their often nonsensical, elliptical, and topsy-turvy sentences seem grounded in some kind of inner reality. But once you catch on that very little of what is being said is spoken for anything other than the sake of its own cleverness, all the best acting in the world, and even the smartest directing (Anne Kauffman does her admirable best in this capacity) is not going to make it easier to sit through what becomes an endurance test of concentration. If you go, be sure to take double (or triple) your normal dose of No-Doze or whatever else you need to keep your eyelids open.

            Of course, the linguistic tomfoolery in a play like this must be balanced by symbolic behavior, most notably in SOMEWHERE FUN by the death of the logorrheic Upper East Side realtor Rosemary Rappaport (Ms. Mulgrew), who slowly melts to death before our eyes, ending in a puddle of black sludge and a skull that is treated by a policewoman (Brooke Bloom) as if it were any ordinary corpse (still, stagehands in biohazard suits are required to remove it).  This combination of tricky language and weird images reminds me of the plays of Eugene Ionesco; Ionesco, however, usually made his plays compellingly human, with definite stakes motivating the characters. Here one gives up trying to determine what those stakes are when it becomes clear there are none, or very vague ones.

            This is not to say the characters live in a vacuum. Rosemary is estranged from her son, Benjamin (Greg Keller), and her husband has run off with another woman; still, her never having heard of the Internet seems absurd even in an absurdist world. The aging, elegant socialite Evelyn Armstrong (Ms. Chalfant) is confined to a wheelchair and then a hospital bed because she is dying of cancer (an internal reference to the actress's performance some years back in WIT?), but any suffering we see plays second fiddle to her supercilious attitude toward those around her, her gibes often spoken to the baby in the womb of her caretaker, Lolita (Mary Elena Ramirez). She also has a daughter, Beatrice (Ms. Bloom), whose face was bitten off by a Dalmatian, but, thankfully, no attempt is made to suggest this with makeup. The white-haired Cecelia (Ms. Schultz) comes closest to seeming like a real person, with her computer literacy expressed through her use of an Iphone (a device totally alien to Rosemary) and success at finding a boyfriend via social media.

             I don’t mean to imply that Schwartz’s verbiage is all business and no play, since there are some really clever and even funny twists in the things her people say, especially early on. For example, there’s Evelyn’s crack: “Everything happens for a reason. With the exception of anal cancer.” And buried beneath the nonstop chatter are themes of loss, regret, suffering, and alienation. It’s just that once the conceit is established it has nowhere to go, and without consistently interesting characters speaking the lines and the semblance of a plot to make you care it’s very easy to begin regretting that theatre etiquette doesn’t permit you to check your smart phone to see if someone out there is saying something you really want to hear. Apart from the dextrous performances of Mulgrew, Chalfant, and Schultz, SOMEWHERE FUN, I must repeat, is not.

           

31. Review of 3 KINDS OF EXILE (June 15, 2013)

31. 3 KINDS OF EXILE (June 15, 2013)

 

 

Seeing the half-filled auditorium at the Atlantic Theatre Company’s for a Saturday matinee performance of John Guare’s intermissionless bill of three one-acts, titled 3 KINDS OF EXILE, whose theme is announced in the title, was unsettling. Did it hint that the production had inspired spectators to choose a kind of self-exile and stay away? Although the work is problematic, especially the tiresome third piece, it has its redeeming features.  Still, it’s not easy to encourage people to rush to W. 20^th Street to catch what can only be described as a very mixed bag.

 

 

Atlantic Theatre Company

 

            The Atlantic, which can usually be counted on to invest in interesting scenic surroundings, has gone minimalist here, with designer Takeshi Kata providing only a set of simple curtains surrounding the acting space for the first two plays, “Karel” and “Elzbieta Erased,” and with the curtain suddenly dropped to reveal the bare brick walls for play number three, “Funiage.” Donald Holder’s lighting does a good job in heightening the shadows and offering appropriate coloration, but the focus in these plays, the first two at any rate, is primarily verbal and there is really no need for visual elaboration. Director Neil Pepe has taken each of these stylistically disparate plays and given it its own theatrical character, but the overall effect is flat.

            I read somewhere that “Karel” was inspired by the life of Czech film director Karel Reisz, a fact nowhere mentioned in the program but certainly likely, considering Reisz’s life. Martin Moran, who last season was very effective in his one-man play ALL THE RAGE, is the only performer present. His role is simply that of “Actor,” and his job is to narrate the story of a friend, Karel, who, when he was twelve, was sent by his mother to England from Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s to escape the storm clouds gathering over Europe (the mother, we learn, died at Auschwitz). After overcoming his lack of English and other hardships to become very successful, Karel found himself suffering from a horrible rash, covering his entire body except his hands from the wrist down and his head from the neck up. When it grew progressively worse and no physician could cure it, the Actor tells us, he saw a psychiatrist who helped him recognize the ailment’s psychosomatic basis stemming from his experience with another boy, one he met while traveling to England, who ridiculed him for his dependence on his mother. The piece is essentially an anecdote, told by Karel’s friend, and therefore one step removed from the agony of the original experience. Mr. Moran is skillful at holding the stage, and varying his physical and vocal attitudes, but his affect is that of an “actor” performing a story, and I constantly felt the need for a more relaxed and sincere delivery and one less overtly dramatic.

 

            The second piece, “Elzbieta Erased,” is the most memorable. Two actors, A (John Guare) and B (Omar Sangare), stand at podiums as if engaged in a political debate but that premise is soon abandoned as they rove about the stage, and from podium to podium, in carefully staged moves in order to tell the story of a famous Polish stage star, Elzbieta Czyzewska, whose marriage to American journalist David Halberstam, a Jew, made her an outcast and caused serious damage to her career. A projected image of a large painting of her, in which she looks remarkably like Helen Mirren, forms the background much of the time (the original painting hangs in Andre Bishop’s office at Lincoln Center). Her move with Halberstam to America was followed by many obstacles to her success, largely because of her accent, and she experienced various setbacks, some of them quite fascinating, before she died at 72 in 2010.  Guare crossed paths with her several times, and the links between his work and hers are fascinatingly spelled out, as they are with stories involving William Styron and his novel, SOPHIE’S CHOICE, and the actress who played the part of Sophie in the movie of that book, Meryl Streep.

 

 

Dressed in formal black, Guare, tall and gaunt, with his high-cheekboned face set off by a crop of pure white hair, makes a creditable debut as a professional actor, although he plays not so much a character as a storyteller. When his own name crops up in the dialogue he speaks it as if it is someone other than himself. He works in well-timed counterpoint with another interesting actor, also dressed in black, the smooth-pated, coffee-colored Omar Sangare, son of a Polish mother and Somali father, who moves with silken grace and speaks in a thick Polish accent that is only occasionally impenetrable. He, too, had a personal connection with Czyzewska, with whom he costarred in a Polish production of Guare’s SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION.

            The final, and weakest, play is “Funiage,” a word that mashes together funeral and marriage. It tells the story of Polish playwright and novelist Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969), who sailed to Buenos Aires in 1939 as a sort of cultural ambassador to Argentina on the maiden voyage of the cruise ship Chrobry only for war to break out soon after. Gombrowicz (David Pittu) found himself stuck in Argentina for the duration of the war and ended up living there until 1963. What might have been a fascinating exposition of this talented man’s tragic dilemma of being uprooted by history from his national origins is presented in a much too busy, pseudo-Brechtian cabaret style, with a chorus often dressed in bowler hats and tails, an abundance of piano music, and lots of choreographic movement (credited to Christopher Bayes). Despite Pepe’s theatricalist staging, it remains lusterless, repetitive, and dull; Pittu is unable to bring the piece to life, nor is Peter Maloney, as both Gombrowicz’s father and the ship’s captain.

 

            THREE KINDS OF EXILE has moments of excellence but it fails to cohere as a total package. Even having to sit through a play you don’t care for can be a kind of exile, and in that regard I appreciated the feeling of freedom that came over me when I made my way again into the streets of New York.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



30. Review of VENICE (June 9, 2013)

30. VENICE

 

 

Shakespeare has long been a tempting, if problematic, resource for theatre artists seeking to mine his familiar plots and characters, if not necessarily his language, for opera and musicals. VENICE, in the Anspacher Theatre at the Public, is the latest in this lineage of Shakespeare to musical transformations, and not among the most successful of them. Its source is not THE MERCHANT OF VENICE but OTHELLO, although Eric Rosen’s book treats that classic very loosely, more as an inspiration than a model to be faithfully emulated. There are major characters of whom Shakespeare never dreamed, plot situations that are new, and plot twists and character developments whose resonance can only be fully appreciated if you know the original.

            A Clown MC, played by the show’s talented composer and co-lyricist, Matt Sax, serves as a kind of black-garbed CABARET-like mediator, introducing the story and interposing himself in many scenes, as he delivers his hip-hop musical patter while also showing off his versatility with slick dance moves and strong singing chops. He works on a set by Beowulf Boritt composed of simple scaffolding and platforms set against a background effectively lit by Jason Lyons, all of it resembling some of the numerous Shakespeare productions given in this venue over the years. Jason H. Thompson’s projections, both still and moving, as well as video sequences, include numbered titles for each scene, such as “Citizens of Venice,” “Sunrise,” “Liberation: Pull Up the People,” “Never Wish War on a People,” “Poison,” “Put Out the Light,” etc., which also are the titles of each scene’s principal song.

            With the help of projected text we learn that the city of Venice underwent a brutal war twenty years earlier, during which 20,000 people were killed and the city destroyed, with the elite citizens setting themselves up behind a wall in an area called the Safe Zone, ruled by Westbrook Enterprises, which has set up a military occupation that oppressively rules over the population in the rest of the city. (“If you see something, say something,” people are warned.)The specifics of what led to this situation are very vague, but we do know that the downtrodden citizens are massing for a revolution to reunite the split city by tearing down the wall, and that their leader is a young man named Venice Monroe (Haaz Sleiman), obviously based on Othello. He was separated at age seven from the Desdemona character, Willow Turner (Jennifer Damiano), the privileged daughter of the assassinated president, who lives in the Safe Zone but is actually on the side of the revolutionaries. She and Venice Monroe are lovers (this all becomes very muddy), despite their long separation, but the autocratic leader of Venice is another young man, Theodore Westbrook (Jonathan-David), who is also in love with Willow, and becomes Venice’s principal rival. Then there is the Michael Cassio character, here called Michael Victor (Claybourne Elder), who serves as Venice’s right hand man and is no longer the object of the hero’s jealousy. And, of course, we have an Iago avatar, Markos Monroe (Leslie Odom, Jr.), Venice’s black half-brother.

            Venice is the child of a rape, you see, which presumably explains why Venice is light skinned [the actor is from Lebanon] and Markos is dark; you may recognize the actor as Sam from TV’s SMASH. Perhaps I should mention that, in a dream scene, the freedom fighter mother, Anna (Uzo Aduba) materializes, so the rape can be staged, a totally unnecessary intrusion of fantasy into the action. Markos is a general, the leader of the military occupation, so his opposition to Venice is based on both personal and political jealousy. His wife Emilia (Victoria Platt), whom he coolly manipulates to serve his purposes, bears the name of her Shakespearean counterpart, and she more or less serves a similar dramaturgic purpose.  
 

            There’s no need to go into all the complex and extraneous plot developments; the point is that the theme of sexual jealousy regarding Desdemona’s alleged infidelity that dominates OTHELLO, while still present, has been watered down (a letter becomes a crucial prop instead of Desdemona’s handkerchief), with the new character of Theo made the potential transgressor, thus turning the conflict into one political as well as love rivalry. There are many issues that remain vague or inconsistent; all we need to know is that there are two factions fighting for dominance with mixed motives and that the good guys simply want peace and liberation. The show includes themes of personal and political trust and betrayal, marital unrest, political ambition, romance, and violence, but it is rarely emotionally involving and, at nearly two and a half hours, is overlong. Given the array of talent and professionalism on display, it is frustrating to be in their company for so long without caring at all what happens to them. The human dimension simply gets buried under all the technically proficient  but essentially banal sound and fury. And, except for a stray laugh or two, the mood is determinedly grim and lacking in humor.

            As in so many contemporary musicals, the music is generic with largely unmelodic melodies. The lyrics for most songs are intended to carry the narrative, which would be fine if they were at least able to also overcome their cerebral qualities and affect one’s feelings. We get lots of vocal and rhythmic pyrotechnics, but the music and lyrics have little emotional resonance. Chase Brock has created a lot of dance movement for the dynamic and focused company but, like the hip-hop and rock-based music, while often clever, it seems overly familiar and, ultimately, uninteresting.

            At the end, despite the unresolved political conflict, the survivors behave as if they’ve achieved victory, singing that “I can see the sun rise,” and “give us just one moment to shine,” the effect somehow being strangely reminiscent of “Let the Sun Shine In” in HAIR. The cast takes its curtain call to an insistent rhythm that gets the audience clapping along with them, so it wasn’t surprising to overhear audience members leaving the theatre speaking in energized tones about how much they’d enjoyed the show. Me, I’d have rather been in Venice.

29. Review of THE WEIR (June 13, 2013)

29. THE WEIR

 

Conor McPherson’s liltingly written THE WEIR, first produced in London in 1997, and brought to Broadway in 1999, is being given a finely calibrated, lovingly designed, and expertly performed revival at the Irish Repertory Theatre under Ciarán O’Reilly’s sensitive direction. This 90-minute, intermissionless drama, named for a kind of dam, is set in a tiny but naturalistically detailed Irish village pub, designed by Charlie Corcoran, atmospherically lit by Michael Gottlieb, where youthful bar owner (or publican) Brenden (Billy Carter) presides over a gang of local guzzlers and old friends, Jack (Dan Butler), an aging mechanic and garage proprietor; Jim (John Keating), Jack’s bushy-haired assistant, and Finbar (Sean Gormley), a successful hotelier.

             All have the gift of blarney, which they dramatically demonstrate when Finbar, who has sold her a local house that has been vacant for some years, brings into their midst a pretty young woman in her thirties, Valerie (Tessa Klein); she has moved to this isolated area from Dublin because of something that happened to her there. As the booze flows freely, and the wind outside howls, the talk turns to local folklore and supernatural events and fairies, each of the men except Brendan telling Valerie, whom they wish to impress, a chillingly haunting yet emotionally touching and sometimes funny tale, only for Valerie’s own story—about the death of her little girl and an experience she had some time afterward when she believed she had received a phone call from the child to come and pick her up from her Nana’s—to be the most moving of them all. Toward the end, Jack offers the true tale of a major romantic misstep from his early life, reinforcing the play’s theme of the need for people to connect and of lost opportunities, but it also hints at hope for Valerie’s future, and maybe Brenden’s as well.  

 

Outside the Irish Repertory Theatre on W. 22nd Street.

            There is little plotting per se, as the playwright is interested mainly in storytelling, and the believably Irish accented actors who get to tell the stories do a masterful job of pulling in both the other characters and the audience; the only extraneous noise you would have heard during the hypnotic narratives the night I saw the play was my own coughing, the result of a chest cold that had me wishing I had a weir to dam up my own phlegm. I suspect that audiences seeing this fine work, the best I’ve seen at the Irish Rep since I began going regularly a year ago, will be haunted by it.