31 (2019-2020): Review: DROPPING GUMBALLS ON LUKE WILSON (seen June 18, 2019)

“Cloudy with a Chance of Gumballs”

When it comes to movie titles that include the names of famous, still working actors, I can think only of Being John Malkovich. I can’t, however, come up with a play that does so (can you?) other than Dropping Gumballs on Luke Wilson, by Rob Ackerman, which just opened at Off Broadway’s A.R.T. /New York Theatres in a Working Theatre production. (Note: a day after posting this I spotted the title of a new novel by Kerry Winfrey, Waiting for Tom Hanks.)

Jonathan Sale (below), Dean Nolen, George Hampe. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Wilson (Bottle Rocket, Legally Blonde, The Royal Tenenbaums) himself doesn’t appear in it but a striking facsimile does in the person of Jonathan Sale (a slender actor stuffed just enough to suggest Wilson’s having recently packed on a few because of the generous catering provisions available).

The play itself is a slim, 75-minute, semi-absurdist, oddball farce inspired by events surrounding the making of an AT&T smartphone commercial in 2010. The commercial, seen here, was one of a series, and not only starred Wilson but was directed by famed documentarian Errol Morris (David Wohl). 

Dean Nolen, George Hampe. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Its intention is to satirize what happens when Morris’s (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War) eccentric directorial demands clash with the requirements of corporate advertising. It offers some insights into the behind-the-cameras operations of commercial-making and also comments on whether or not celebrities doing commercials is somehow beneath them. Woody Allen, it’s noted, did his in Japan as a way of avoiding scrutiny at home. 

While the play is sometimes cute, sometimes quirky, sometimes funny, and more times not, it remains consistently watchable thanks to the cleverly humorous direction of Theresa Rebeck, better known as a respected, prolific playwright (with four Broadway plays to her credit). Rebeck is wise enough to know that, despite the silliness of the circumstances, the best way to present them is to keep a straight face and take things seriously. Under her command, the actors know just when to overplay (rarely) and when to underplay; keeping their touch light, for the most part, they manage to keep all those gumballs in the air.

Ah, yes. Those gumballs. The play says that 500 of them (which seems low when you view the actual commercial)—representing the red dots on AT&T rival Verizon’s connectivity map—had to be dropped from above on Wilson as he said his lines. They began slowly and then turned into a torrent that he calmly stemmed by popping open an umbrella. (Some sources say they were marbles.) 

Reyna de Courcy, Jonathan Sale (below), George Hampe. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

In the play, those responsible for pouring the gumballs are a middle-aged special effects man, Ken (Dean Nolen), and his young, fast-talking, insecure yet dedicated assistant, Rob (George Hampe). The latter is based on the playwright, himself a professional prop master. 

Also involved are Jenny (Reyna de Courcy), the young, enthusiastic, entry-level props person, awed to be working with Wilson and Morris, and Alice (Ann Harada, Cinderella), the ambitious, seriously professional, first assistant director. (Harada also appears in a flashback as an Australian director.)

Conflicts begin to arise during repeat takes of the commercial when Rob’s insecurity is triggered by his having been praised for a good job on the first take. This leads to subsequent screwups, which cause Wilson to be struck by a gumball, an effect Morris finds so interesting he insists that many more gumballs be dropped directly on the actor’s head, despite the pain Wilson’s already experienced.

Jonathan Sale, Reyna de Courcy, George Hampe, Ann Harada, David Wohl. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

 Soon we’re in a tangle of power dynamics in the workplace chain of command, the props and effects people, the actor, the party responsible for the actor’s safety, and the egotistic director, who insists he’s the smartest one in the room. Meanwhile, the situation sparks a number of reactions, including a sharp diatribe by Rob against the effects of corporate greed. There's also one from Jenny, citing feminist issues, including this blast.

Because women read more and write more and care more and work harder and do better at almost everything, so we need to be heard-- in the workplace and in the halls of power and the hallways of schools-- ’cause we are so fucking sick of bloated old white men telling us what’s right and what’s true in the world.

These outbursts may have serious goals but they deflect from the play's comedic style and implicit purposes by drawing attention to their polemics.

As things heat up, Morris remains preternaturally cool, enjoying his ability to make demands no matter whose heads roll for insisting otherwise. His readiness to defy union rules borders on the chilling. Wohl (Golden Boy, Fiddler on the Roof), often delivering Morris’s thoughts via a handheld mike, carries it all off with memorable assurance.

Dean Nolen, Reyna de Courcy, George Hampe, Ann Harada. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Christopher Swader and Justin Swader’s impressive-looking set, spread across a wide expanse of A.R.T.’s Mezzanine Theatre, with the audience facing it on several rows of bleacher seats, represents a greenscreen space in a Brooklyn Navy Yard film studio. Director chairs sit amid the lighting equipment, reflectors, and cables. Eventually, red gumballs litter the stage, forcing the actors to walk around and on them, crushing any in their path. (Impossible if they were marbles, of course.)

Mary Ellen Stebbins’s lighting is fine, Yana Biryukova’s video design fits perfectly, Tricia Barsamian’s costumes are all appropriate, and Bart Fasbender's sound design excellent.

Even with the occasional shifts from comic realism to more surrealistic moments, the basic situation begins to seem like an overextended sketch. Dropping Gumballs on Luke Wilson is a dramatized anecdote that doesn’t really offer that much to chew on but, like a gumball, tastes good while it lasts.

Dropping Gumballs on Luke Wilson

A.R.T./New York Theatres/Mezzanine Theatre

502 W. 53^rd St., NYC

Through July 6

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30 (2019-2020): Review: [VEIL WIDOW CONSPIRACY] (seen June 17, 2019)

"Chinese Boxes"

For my review of [Veil Widow Conspiracy] please click on THEATER PIZZAZZ.

29 (2019-2020): Review: JULIE MADLY DEEPLY (seen June 12, 2019)

"Her Favorite Things"

For my review of Julie Madly Deeply please click on THE BROADWAY BLOG.

28 (2019-2020): Review: SQUARE GO (seen June 11, 2019)

“Game of Throws”

Not sure what Square Go, the title of a briskly done, offbeat Scottish play now at 59E59 Theaters, means? Here are some of the alternative expressions provided by the two characters around whom the action revolves: a pager; a heavy swedge; a mano-a-mano; a possible do-in; a guaranteed pumpin; an act of combat; a bust-up; fisticuffs; and a stramash. Finally we get to the simple: “A fight, basically. Man to man. A go. No weapons. Two men, squared off against each other, toe to toe. A square go.”

Daniel Portman. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

However, the “men” preparing to have a square go in Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair’s play, a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe, aren’t precisely men, although the actors playing them are. They’re 13-year-old boys at Hammerston High School, “a run of the mill school in a run-of-the-mill town.” One of them is preparing to engage in combat later in the day with a bully named Danny Guthrie (don’t dare call him Daniel). (An even bigger bully, Big Jordan, is another threat.)

Gavin Jon Wright, Daniel Portman. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

The boy we’re chiefly concerned about is Max (Daniel Portman, Podrick Payne on TV’s Game of Thrones), pudgy, pony-tailed, and obsessed with studying video tapes of wrestler Macho Man Randy Savage but struggling with absent-father issues. Max (the name he prefers over his given one) said something in class that ticked off Danny, “the monster.” Frightened, Max is hiding out in the school loo (bathroom, to you), preparing for his square go by building up his confidence while bantering with his best friend, the wiry, strawberry lace licorice-chewing Stevie Nimmo (Gavin Jon Wright, who originated the role at the Edinburgh Fringe).

Daniel Portman, Gavin Jon Wright. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

The metatheatrical style, in which we’re being told the story while it’s in the process of being acted out, and which includes a considerable amount of audience participation—especially when we’re asked to cheer loudly for Max—allows Stevie to play multiple roles, such as the school bullies, a teacher named Mr. Hobbins, and Max’s dad. Given the energetically charged vocal and physical performances on view, it’s not always clear just who’s talking. The actors are so intensely invested in the action, however, it rarely matters that much.

Daniel Portman, Gavin Jon Wright. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Both boys are dressed in wrestling gear of laced-up shoes, shorts, and tank tops, supplemented at times by a Mexican-style wrestling mask, one of the few props emerging from their gym bags. Another is a blow-up doll of a muscular, masked wrestler, eventually used by Stevie to loudly pound the shite out of Max. And a hand-held mic is an indispensable accessory to several scenes.

Gavin Jon Wright, Daniel Portman. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Director Finn Den Hertog’s fast-paced, supercharged production takes place entirely on a square white mat, surrounded on four sides by the small audience in 59E59’s tiny Theater C, with not a single scenic element to prevent the possible stepping on your toes or spraying on you of the hyperactive actors’ sweat.

Gavin Jon Wright, Daniel Portman. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Lighting designer Peter Small makes the most of his opportunities in this spare environment, even using revolving arena-style lights. A strong sound score featuring original music by Frightened Rabbit has a forceful impact. The show’s extreme physicality, which benefits from the movement work of Vicki Manderson, requires considerable athleticism. At one point, for instance, they race rapidly around the perimeters of the small space; at another, they engage in an excellently coordinated wrestling match, close enough to what you might see in a WWW competition to make you hope no one (including ringside spectators) gets hurt.

Gavin Jon Wright, Daniel Portman. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Because of the thick, sometimes (for me, at least) impenetrable, Scottish accents, with a plethora of Scottish lingo—a veritable onslaught of vivid vulgarity, urban slang (I had to look up words like “hauners”), nasty insults, and misused vocabulary—you sometimes have to trust your instincts rather than your ears to follow what’s being said.

Gavin Jon Wright. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

But, for all its brevity (one hour), the play makes many sharp points. These touch on misguided boyish visions of masculinity (one scene cites the “seven attributes of being a man”), bullying, sex, name-calling, homophobia, parental needs (and the displacement onto a teacher of affection for a missing parent), and the realization of self-worth amid the smallminded rules of small-town life.

Excellent as are the performances of Portman and Wright, I never for a minute believed that Max and Stevie were 13-year-olds. For all their obvious immaturity, much of these boys’ language, behavior, and sometimes preternaturally wise ideas could as easily be applied to college boys. Even real prepubescent actors would have trouble making them believable.

Gavin Jon Wright. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

They are, though, viscerally compelling, and Hurley and McNair’s play offers Portman and Wright a slambang opportunity for an acting slugfest, or more to the point, a theatrical square go.

Square Go

59E59 Theaters/Theater C

59 E. 59^th St., NYC

Through June 30

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27 (2019-2020): Review: HANDBAGGED (seen June 6, 2019)

'"Two for Tea"

For my review of Handbagged please click on THEATER LIFE.

26 (2019-2020): Review: LITTLE WOMEN (seen June 9, 2019)

"The Four Sisters"

The four March sisters have returned to the stage in the latest of a succession of stage, TV, film, and even opera adaptations of Louisa May Alcot’s 1868/1869 novel, Little Women. Loosely based on Alcott’s own family during and soon after the Civil War, the book was originally written for girls but quickly became a bestseller, still beloved by both adults and children. In 1919, the character of Jo March helped ignite the career of the great actress Katherine Cornell; it also provided a still glowing film role for the young Katharine Hepburn in 1933. 

Carmen Zilles, Paola Sanchez Abreu, Maria Elena Ramirez, Kristolyn Lloyd, Kate Hamill. Photo: Matt Ross.

Little Women’s latest incarnation arrives via what has become a reliable part of recent theatre seasons, an adaptation by actress/playwright Kate Hamill of classic 19th-century novels, in which she also plays a major role. Each adaptation enjoys playing with theatrical conventions, stays close enough to its source so that it remains clearly recognizable, takes considerable dramatic liberties, seeks opportunities for farcical overstatement, and finds contemporary feminist relevancies to exploit. 

Kate Hamill, Carmen Zilles, Ellen Harvey, Paola Sanchez Abreu, Kristolyn Lloyd. Photo: Matt Ross.

In Little Women, Hamill is concerned with the gender-based expectations of its female characters. The March sisters and their mother, Marmee (Megan Byrne, standing in for Maria Elena Ramirez at the performance I saw) are waiting out the war in their New England home while father is away with the Union Army. Beth (Paola Sanchez Abreu), unbearably shy, stays indoors in her nightgown throughout, and dies young. Meg (Hamill) marries John Brooks [sic] (Michael Crane), the tutor of Laurie (Nate Mann), the wealthy boy next door, and has twins. Jo (Kristolyn Lloyd) is a would-be writer who struggles with her conventional gender-identity. And Amy (Carmen Zilles), the youngest, has artistic aspirations in Alcott but is notable here mainly as a serial malapropist, Jo even keeping a record of her mistakes (like “purist” for “puerile”). 

Nate Mann, Kristolyn Lloyd. Photo: Matt Ross.

Hamill’s rather shallow characters hew roughly to what Alcott provided in multiple dimensions; none can be taken as a literal version of their originals. Hamill specifically dismisses the idea of creating museum replicas of her sources. This allows her to interject overtly contemporary commentary and business that stick out like sore thumbs: a male authority figure slaps a woman’s behind, a woman decries the word “hysterical” to describe her behavior, and so on. 

Kristolyn Lloyd, Paola Sanchez Lloyd. Photo: Matt Ross.

Her focus, of course, is on Jo, the emerging writer, played according to Hamill’s demand for inclusive casting, by African-American actress Lloyd, who turns in a feisty performance. This Jo is a woman determined to stand apart from the gender-based role society demands. Taking the book’s emphasis on Jo’s tomboyish behavior one step further, she appears mainly in male garb, including a top hat, suggesting what some may see as incipient queerness, especially when she rejects the proposal of Laurie. (He himself is given a momentary expression of gender confusion although he ends up with Amy.) Alcott’s Jo, of course, eventually marries Professor Bhaer, her German tutor, and lives happily ever after. Bhaer, however, is omitted from Hamill’s version, leaving you to ponder a rather cloudy vision of Jo’s fate. 

Kate Hamill, Kristolyn Lloyd, Maria Elena Ramirez, Paola Sanchez Abreau, Carmen Zilles. Photo: Matt Ross.

I’ve seen three other Hamill adaptations, two based on Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, and one based on Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. While the latter two had their strong points, none came close to the level of theatrical delight present in Sense and Sensibility. Ditto Little Women, which, like Pride and Prejudice, is produced by Primary Stages. 

Kate Hamill, Michael Crane. Photo: Matt Ross.

As with Hamill’s other works, Little Women is written to be staged within a simple, adaptable setting (well realized by Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams), relying on easily movable period furnishings, shifted by the actors, to suggest changing locales, and generalized period costumes (capably designed by Valérie Thérèse Bart) that provide a sense of the times. MacAdams provides a bilevel wooden set, placed against the Cherry Lane Theatre’s exposed brick stage wall. A writing desk is on one side of the upper platform, a bed (where poor Beth passes) on the other. 

Nate Mann, Kate Hamill, Kristolyn Lloyd. Photo: Matt Ross.

Sarna Lapine’s direction keeps things flowing crisply but allows heightened acting to mingle with more realistic expression, providing a number of styles. She does what she can to emphasize the script’s playacting routines, including too many mock duels with wooden swords, around which much of the action transpires. Life in the March household is made to seem a never-ending world of escapist fantasy conjured up by Jo’s childishly melodramatic imagination. 

Paola Sanchez Abreu, Ellen Harvey, John Lenartz, Kate Hamill, Kristolyn Lloyd, Nate Mann. Photo: Matt Ross.

This production is less prone to the kind of theatrical foolery that marked much of the other Hamill plays. It avoids such tired tropes as bearded men playing women with overstated costumes and wigs. Nevertheless, in Act One of this two-hour, two-act play, the spirited tone and pace means a loss of pathos in those scenes when it should be paramount. 

Ellen Harvey, Kate Hamill, Kristolyn Lloyd. Photo: Matt Ross.

Not all comical exaggeration is absent, however, as we still have some cartoonish touches, like the farcically shrieky Mrs. Mingott (Ellen Harvey, who also plays Hannah, the servant). I kind of enjoyed the squawky parrot, though, played by Michael Crane with birdlike movements and feathers in his hair. My plus-one, however, couldn’t stop complaining afterward about how annoying this bird bit was. 

Hamill’s Little Women fails to justify the effort required for its new dramatization. It neither succeeds as a faithful representation of the novel nor as a significant contribution to the dramatic literature of identity issues. Like its depiction of Jo, it’s neither one thing nor the other.

Little Women

Cherry Lane Theatre

38 Commerce St., NYC

Through June 29

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25 (2019-2020): Review: PUBLIC SERVANT (seen June 7, 2019)

"House for Sale and No One's Buying"

For my review of Public Servant please click on THE BROADWAY BLOG.