"Military Mayhem"
For my review of Incident at Hidden Temple please click on THE BROADWAY BLOG.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
Monday, January 30, 2017
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
125. Review: THE GREAT AMERICAN DRAMA (seen January 20, 2017)
“Not Making American Drama Great Again”
The Great American Drama is an “experimental” theatre piece by a group of (mostly) young artists calling itself the Neo-Futurists. In 2014 I saw something by them called The Complete and Condensed Stage Direction of Eugene O’Neill Vol. 2 that was one of more impressive experimental pieces for mainstream audiences around at the time.
In what was more a description than a review, I wrote:
I missed the first “volume” (2011) of this ongoing project, which is downtown at the Theater for a New City. Since what I viewed was an invited dress rehearsal all I’ll say is that this is a clever, one hour and 25-minute piece of devised theatre by a group called the Neo-Futurists in which four versatile actors, two men and two women, using a spare space with carefully chosen props, enact—in mime, apart from a few vocalizations—O’Neill’s extensive stage directions in five early one-acts from 1913-1915 (“RECKLESSNESS,” “WARNINGS,” “FOG,” “ABORTION,” and “THE SNIPER”), as they’re read into a microphone by a seated actor at a desk. The directions are so detailed one can figure out the plots even without dialogue; the results, as adapted and directed by Christopher Loar, are far more comic (intentionally) than the usually dour playwright intended.
I’m afraid the current Neo-Futurist project, now at the new A.R.T. Theatre, way over on W. 53rd near 10th, is anything but what its name suggests. For one thing, it’s not a play, per se, but an evening of devised theatre composed of bits and pieces shared among four actors. This diverse group (in terms of sexual orientation, race, age, and nationality) is joined now and then by Lijie, a sweet, young woman who entertains us with preshow music, accompanies some of the action, and once or twice joins the actors in their scenes. The others, in addition, to Sampson, are Daniel McKoy, Katy-May Hudson, and Nicole Hill. Greg Taubman codirected with Sampson.
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| Daniel McKoy, Connor Sampson, Nicole Hill, Katy-May Hudson. Photo: Hunter Canning. |
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| Katy-May Hudson, Daniel McKoy. Photo: Hunter Canning. |
Thus the evening is fluid, combining both rehearsed set pieces and improvised ones, with no two shows ever being the same. There’s a lot of Trump material, none of it positive, of course, which I appreciated hearing when I attended, on Inauguration Day. Unfortunately, the only thing enjoyable about the Trump-bashing was its existence; like almost every other attempt at humor in the piece, which also includes clown shtick and cardboard puppets (including a takeoff on a Trump-Clinton debate), the results are sophomoric, heavy-handed, and, too often, seriously unfunny.
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| Nicole Hill, Connor Sampson, Daniel McKoy. Photo: Hunter Canning. |
Each of the performers is friendly, approachable, and personable. They may even have acting chops that would prove satisfactory in a more conventional theatrical framework. But they’re not especially strong as improvisers or satirists (regardless of what they’re satirizing), nor, as an extensive solo called “Soulbird” (by Andrew J. Hanley) demonstrates, would you ever see them on “The Voice.” Nothing here comes close to the kind of wit and panache we associate with even the weakest routines on SNL and other comedy showcases.
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| Nicole Hill. Photo: Hunter Canning. |
Presumably inspired by the audience’s suggestions, the show offers lots of autobiographical commentary on the plight of struggling theatre artists; tells us personal stuff about each of the performers; provides parodic jabs at big-time commercial theatre (including a routine from Hamilton that stops short when a note about not being able to exceed copyright laws appears); presents passages reflecting socio-political concerns, including what it means to be human; includes a scene in which the actors offer to take off their clothes until someone says “stop” (which, thankfully, someone did very quickly when I went); indulges in audience participation; makes references to contemporary issues, like drone strikes; and so on. The result: a throw-it-on-the-ceiling-and-see-what-sticks hodge-podge.
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| Daniel McKoy, Katy-May Hudson, Nicole Hill, Connor Sampson. Photo: Hunter Canning. |
Somewhere during its 90 minutes the goal of trying to determine what makes the great American drama gets lost. But before that happens, the actors ask the audience to text whether they thought the show was a success, which, indeed, is their ultimate goal. As they stand with their backs to the audience, a scattered number of cell phones light up throughout the recently opened Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre. When the results were projected the night I went the actors were delighted to see that over 94% of those texting thought them a success, while around 5% felt the opposite. Early reviews seem to correspond with this result.
Good for them and to hell with my reaction. On the other hand, as someone once said, perhaps we should be a bit more skeptical about polls.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
A.R.T./New York Theatres/Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre
502 W. 53rd St., NYC
Through February 5
Monday, January 23, 2017
124. Review: THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE (seen January 22, 2017)
“Women’s Fights”
Martin McDonagh (The Pillowman, The Cripple of Inishmaan), London-born and raised, but whose densely atmospheric black comedies set in Ireland make him a full-blooded Irish playwright, began his ascent about 20 years ago when Galway’s then new Druid Theatre produced The Beauty Queen of Leenane under Garry Hynes’s potent direction. Two years after its Irish premiere it made it to Broadway, where it was regaled and Hynes became the first woman director to win a Tony. (The production won four of its six nominations.)
Now it’s back in another splendidly Hynes-helmed, Druid-originated revival, for a month-long run at BAM’s Harvey Theatre before moving to other cities. The cast includes Marie Mullen, who played Maureen Folan in the original (for which she, too, won a Tony) as Mag, Maureen’s harridan of a mother. Aisling O’Sullivan is the new Maureen, inspiration for the title. As others have pointed out, the casting makes ironically palpable the notion that women often turn into their mothers.
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| Marie Mullen, Aisling O'Sullivan. Photo: Richard Termine. |
Nonetheless, the performances are so vigorously pointed and the comedic sparks so fiery that you can’t help but be drawn in as Mag, whose habits include emptying her bedpan in the kitchen sink, does little but sit in her rocker and order Maureen about with a nonstop barrage of ridicule and contempt. Mullen is marvelous at making us laugh at Mag’s willful cruelty as she digs under her daughter’s skin with a combination of vocal bullets and shifting facial expressions and bodily positions.
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| Marie Mullen, Aisling O'Sullivan, Marty Rea. Photo: Richard Termine. |
Maureen, once the victim of a nervous breakdown that sent her to the “loony bin,” is a tense livewire, carefully walking the tightrope between accepting her domestic martyrdom and blowing her blonde-haired top. O’Sullivan manages the balancing act with delicacy and strength.
Maureen, desperate for a man, eventually meets an appealing construction worker named Pato Dooley (Marty Rea, wonderful) at a dinner dance the malicious Mag tried to prevent her from knowing about. The budding relationship with Pato, who thinks of Maureen as “the beauty queen of Leenane,” alarms Mag, who fears losing Maureen’s support. After they spend a night together, Pato and Maureen hit a bump in the road, and he takes a job in England.
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| Marty Rea, Aisling O'Sullivan. Photo: Richard Termine. |
Act Two begins with the spotlighted Pato, unsure of Maureen’s feelings, writing to her to join him in America, where he’s been offered a job. He then writes to his childish brother, Ray (an amusing but occasionally over-accented Aaron Monaghan), insisting in this pre-Internet world that he hand Maureen’s letter directly to her, although he fails to insist that he not hand it to her mother.
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| Aisling O'Sullivan, Marie Mullen. Photo: Richard Termine. |
The wonderfully written and performed letter monologue is a highlight, but the contents make instantly clear where the plot will be going. Still, even more egregious tests of credibility and dramaturgic validity lie ahead, especially in the closing minutes and their foreshadowed violence. Nonetheless, McDonagh’s ripe, broguish language, his feisty characterizations, and the richly voiced, emotionally honest, and comically vibrant acting, keep you constantly engrossed.
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| Aaron Monaghan, Marie Mullen. Photo: Richard Termine. |
The Beauty Queen of Leenane may not be the masterpiece it once seemed but its beauties, especially when given a mostly definitive performance, can’t be denied.
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| Aisling O'Sullivan. Photlo: Richard Termine. |
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)/Harvey Theatre
651 Fulton St., Brooklyn
Through February 5
123. Review: ORANGE JULIUS (seen January 18, 2017)
“Not for Drinking”
I was disappointed recently when I noticed that the Orange Julius concession at a mall I’ve been frequenting for decades had gone out of business. I was equally disappointed by Basil Kreimendahl’s play, which uses the delicious soft drink’s name but has nothing—apart from a passing reference—in common with it. Orange Julius the play (which premiered in San Diego) is earnest, well-meaning, and politically correct but none of these ingredients is sufficient—at least in Dustin Wills’s decently acted and well-staged but often lethargic, hour-and-a-half production at the Rattlestick—to strongly recommend it. |
| Irene Sofia Lucio, Stephen Payne, Mary Testa. Photo: Sandra Coudert Graham. |
Kate Noll’s set places most of the action within a gritty garage, with a full-sized garage door upstage that the actors pull up sharply to open the space for scenes set during the Vietnam War. A door to the bathroom up right (the same onstage bathroom used by the audience) serves as a passageway to the house’s interior, while a door to the outside is up left. The garage serves as a neutral space for events running through the memory of the transmasculine (born female but identifying as male) Nut (Jess Barbagello), who introduces his long-suffering mother France (Mary Testa), his sister Crimp (Irene Sofia Lucia), and his Vietnam vet father, Julius (Stephen Payne). A brother is mentioned but never appears; his offstage presence seems unnecessary.
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| Jess Barbagello, Stephen Payne. Photo: Sandra Coudert Graham. |
Simply stated, the lyrical play dramatizes the relationship of the family (and especially Nut’s) to Julius, who’s suffering the devastating, and soon to be fatal, cancerous effects of Agent Orange. As narrator, Nut jumps loosely back and forth in time with introductory remarks like: “I’m seven, or six, nine maybe eight,” or “I’m 12, 14 maybe 13” as he struggles to come to terms with a father who rarely touched him, and separated from, then reunited with his mother.
Nut longs to be accepted by his dad as a man, not a woman, which is emphasized in imagined flashbacks to Vietnam, where Nut becomes one of Julius’s combat buddies, alongside a gung-ho soldier called Ol’ Boy (Ruy Iskander); Nut, inspired by the war movies he used to watch with Julius on Veterans' Day, is imagining the experiences Julius himself (like so many veterans) has rarely talked about so he can bond, man to man, with him.
Nut longs to be accepted by his dad as a man, not a woman, which is emphasized in imagined flashbacks to Vietnam, where Nut becomes one of Julius’s combat buddies, alongside a gung-ho soldier called Ol’ Boy (Ruy Iskander); Nut, inspired by the war movies he used to watch with Julius on Veterans' Day, is imagining the experiences Julius himself (like so many veterans) has rarely talked about so he can bond, man to man, with him.
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| Jess Barbagello, Mary Testa, Irene Sofia Lucio. Photo: Sandra Coudert Graham. |
Except for a moment of discomfort Nut remembers of his father innocently putting his hand on Nut’s knee while driving, the story he tells of growing up as the sexually uncertain daughter of a macho father is not particularly gripping or unusual. His personal issues and ultimate transgender status are so subtly presented that it’s easy to take them for granted. Orange Julius is anything but a polemic.
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| Jess Barbagello, Stephen Payne, Ruy Iskander. Photo: Sandra Coudert Graham. |
The play’s loose, sometimes dreamlike, structure only serves to intensify its dramatic monotony. There are numerous incidents but, apart from seeing Julius’s physical and mental dissolution, there’s little enough tension or conflict to hold one’s attention or to make one wonder about what’s coming next. Nor does Kreimendahl offer any particularly provocative insights into the Agent Orange problem, other than to enumerate its potential effects.
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| Mary Testa, Jess Barbagello, Stephen Payne. Photo: Sandra Coudert Graham. |
Under Wills’s direction, too many scenes are quiet and low-key, the domestic dynamic being altered mainly when the war scenes arrive with their dramatic lighting and smoke (designed by Barbara Samuels). Palmer Heffernan further heightens the atmosphere with music and sounds, especially when a chopper is heard overhead, but lights, smoke, and sound can only go so far in creating real dramatic tension.
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| Ruy Iskander, Jess Barbagello, Stephen Payne. Photo: Sandra Coudert Graham. |
Payne is totally believable as the grizzled, grumpy, and ailing vet, and Testa is fine as a woman faced with a difficult domestic situation, although fans of her great comic skills won’t see much of them here. Iskander brings vitality to the rough and ready Ol’ Boy, Lucio is a sympathetic older sister, and Barbagello (also known as a playwright) is convincing as Nut. But none of these actors is able to give Orange Julius the juice it needs to overcome its dramatic weaknesses.
The word "orange," of course, is being used in another context nowadays, and one with just as much potential for toxicity.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre
64 Waverly Place, NYC
Through February 12
Friday, January 20, 2017
122. Review: THE DORK KNIGHT (seen January 19, 2017)
"Pow! Bam! Zap!"
Confession: I have a middle-aged son who is such a comic
book and action figure dork that you can’t move in his house without fear of
knocking some musclebound superhero off his carefully positioned perch. So I
was well prepared to sympathize with and appreciate the Batman obsession of
Jason O’Connell revealed in his hilarious but also poignant one-man play, The Dork Knight.
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| Jason O'Connell. Photo: Ben Stothmann. |
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| Jason O'Connell. Photo: Ben Stothmann. |
Standing within a black-painted space, bare except for a
black arm chair and a small side table, he begins his tale with one of the deadliest spot-on impressions I’ve ever seen of Michael Keaton, star of the
first two movies in the franchise, directed by Tim Burton. Puckering his lips, squinting
his eyes, drying his lips with his tongue, speaking his words with dry, low-key
naturalness, hunching his shoulders a bit, he lets you not only hear but see
Keaton in the flesh.
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| Jason O'Connell. Photo: Ben Stothmann. |
O’Connell then moves on to reveal his reactions to each of
the subsequent films. This allows him to insert impressions not only of the
stars who played the caped crusader—from Keaton to Kilmer to Clooney to Bale to
Affleck—but also to capture the vocal and facial mannerisms of several of
Batman’s nemeses, like Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger’s Jokers, Danny DeVito’s
Penguin, Jim Carrey’s Riddler, Tom Hardy’s Bane, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr.
Freeze. Even Anne Hathaway’s Cat and Morgan Freeman’s Alfred pay a visit. Admittedly,
if you’re not a fanboy or fangirl, some of this may pass you by—especially one
scene where too many voices pile on in sequence—but what remains should still
hold you in its grip.
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| Jason O'Connell. Photo: Ben Stothmann. |
The premise, though, is not simply for O’Connell to comment
on these characters and their interpreters, or to describe with comic gusto what
an effort it was to capture the facial expressions of, let’s say, Jack Nicholson,
but to explain how these movies and their themes, especially as expressed
through Batman’s evolving ethos, influenced his own life as a struggling actor
and romantic partner. Interestingly, O’Connell sometimes turns to Shakespeare
(of which he’s done a substantial amount) to heighten his message.
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| Jason O'Connell. Photo: Ben Stothmann. |
His personal tale takes us to back to his childhood, growing
up in a family where his dad left early and he was raised by his mom, grandmother,
and, most lovingly, his grandfather; his father’s abortive attempt to reconnect
with his abandoned children; his excitement when Keaton and Nicholson, his two
favorite actors, were cast together in Tim Burton’s first Batman movie, which
happened soon after he’d written about such dream casting in his high school
newspaper; his growing fascination with the movies, each of which he’d see
multiple times; a job as a locker-room attendant at a boy’s dance
school; and how the wisdom he gleaned from Batman’s attitudes, especially as
embodied in Christian Bales’s growly incarnation, taught him invaluable life
lessons.
Smartly staged by Tony Speciale in the three-quarters round
in the tiny Dorothy Strelsin Theatre, exceptionally well lit by Zach Blane, and
supplemented by (uncredited) sound effects, The
Dork Knight is a perfect vehicle for the personable O’Connell to
demonstrate his considerable range as both a comic and serious actor.
I suspect my son, if he were to see this show, would agree that the impact of comic book heroes on his own life was probably just as deep.
I suspect my son, if he were to see this show, would agree that the impact of comic book heroes on his own life was probably just as deep.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
Abingdon Theatre/Dorothy Strelsin Theatre
312 W. 36th St., NYC
Through January 29
Thursday, January 19, 2017
121. Review: ALBATROSS (seen January 17, 2017)
“Water, Water, Everywhere”
Except for a rainshower late in the play, no actual water appears on stage during this one-man play based on Samuel Coleridge’s 1798 poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” but there’s enough of it projected on a set of ragged sails to make sensitive stomachs queasy. In Albatross, writers Matthew Spengler and Benjamin Evett have created an intense one-man play around Coleridge’s poem, famous for its place in the early history of Romanticism. Evett himself performs the title figure in a tour-de-force of acting chops and physical stamina. |
| Benjamin Evett. Photo: Carole Goldfarb. |
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| Benjamin Evett. Photo: Carole Goldfarb. |
Coleridge’s poem, already rich in imagery and circumstance, and worthy of an unembellished performance in its own right, is here the skeleton on which Spengler and Evett attach a considerable amount of narrative flesh. The mariner, for example, is given a back story of a sick child, a drunken wife, and a tavern visit in Bristol that leads to his being shanghaied aboard a privateer captained by the ferocious Black Dog.
Even more new characters and events, like the cruel destruction of a Spanish galleon and the even crueler death of one of its sailors, which conflates the story with that of the Flying Dutchman, are present, and the dialogue is filled with the salty profanities of the sort that give us phrases like “swearing like a sailor.” The mariner, having been forced to walk the earth for nearly three centuries, often interjects modern references; the appearance of an IPhone is one obvious example.
The original’s highlights remain, of course: these include the ship’s being caught in the icebound South Pole, its windless stasis in the sizzling South Pacific, the presence of supernatural spirits, and the appearance of an albatross that saves the ship only to be meaninglessly slain, thereby precipitating the mariner’s odyssey of guilt and repentance. And Coleridge’s themes regarding the taking of life and respect for nature are updated, with an especially pointed message about the careless disposal of refuse.
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| Benjamin Evett. Photo: Carole Goldfarb. |
Now and then, a verse or two from Coleridge is inserted, and the mariner occasionally takes an ironic, metatheatrical tone toward the poem, making fun of the audience’s expectations regarding such well-known lines as the one about “Water, water, everywhere nor any drop to drink.” The writers have added a great deal of rather vivid verbal imagery depicting physical horrors, including what it’s like when you’re adrift without water for days under a blazing sun and have only your own rotten piss to drink.
Evett, vigorously energetic, keeps moving and talking for 85 minutes, his storytelling enhanced by multimedia effects. When he enters, the set (designed by Cristina Todesco) is a mere black box with a ghost light and hanging ropes, but as he narrates he removes, from an old chest, ragged sheets that he clips to the ropes and then hoists to create the impression of sails. Onto these lighting and projection designer Garett Herzig casts a stirring array of visual images, including roiling seas and technicolored, snakelike turbulence, while sound designer Rick Lombardo, who also directed, provides a panoply of music and effects that greatly enrich the atmosphere.
Evett, shifting voices when necessary (not one of his strongest suits), delivers his lines in a nondescript regional British accent, moving from one emotional level to the other, now ironic, now tragic, now funny, now anguished. The 85-minute play, perhaps 15 minutes longer than it has to be, makes demands that test his endurance. When the rains begin pouring down on him late in the play, you’re happier for the actor than the character that he’s finally got water, water, everywhere.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
59E59 Theaters/Theater B
59 E. 59TH St., NYC
Through February 12
120. Review: JITNEY (seen January 15, 2017)
“Driven”
It’s taken three and a half decades for the late August Wilson’s 1979 Jitney to make the bumpy (and much revised) journey to Broadway, following its 1982 premiere at a small Pittsburgh theatre, including a stop along the way for a hit Off-Broadway production in 2000. The last of Wilson’s ten-play, 20th-century, decade-by-decade cycle about African-American life in working-class Pittsburgh to reach Broadway, it’s snugly parked on the stage of the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s revved-up Manhattan Theatre Club staging.
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| Andre Holland, Carra Patterson. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
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| Andre Holland, Ray Anthony Thomas. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Set during the autumn of 1977 in the beautifully decrepit dispatch office of a Hill District gypsy cab service (“jitneys” in the local vernacular), it introduces its eight men and one woman in the kind of loose storytelling format associated with plays set in barrooms, hotel lobbies, and workers' lunchrooms. The principal plotline has the familiar scent of socially oriented melodrama: the city plans to board up the place and build something else, thus depriving the struggling drivers of their livelihoods. The righteous boss, Becker (John Douglas Thompson), has a plan to fight back, thus giving the play a structural framework, but the real interest is in the intensely vivid characters, their electric, richly accented language, replete with aria-like speeches, and their emotionally fraught relationships.
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| John Douglas Thompson, Michael Potts. Photo: Joan Marcux. |
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| Keith Randolph Smith, Harvy Blanks. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
These relationships include the tension between Turnbo (Michael Potts, compelling), a volatile, gun-owning driver, who keeps butting into others’ affairs, and Darnell Youngblood (André Holland, truthful), an edgy young Vietnam vet whose girlfriend, Rena (Cara Patterson, expert but looking slightly out of place in this world), and the mother of his kid, has caught Turnbo’s eye. There’s also the Youngblood-Rena story, with its suspicions and jealousies related to Youngblood’s attempts to buy a house. Each of the other characters reveals much about his own issues, of course, like the alcoholic Fielding (Anthony Chisholm, convincing), once the tailor for singer Billy Eckstein, or Shealy (Harvy Blanks, likably flashy), the numbers runner who says he’s never been able to love anyone since his breakup with his gal Rosie; he vows not to marry until he finds a woman in whose face he doesn’t see hers.
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| Brandon J. Dirden, John Douglas Thompson. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Jitney’s primary conflict is between Becker and his son, Booster (Brandon Dirden), just released after 20 years in prison for having killed the white girl who, having been discovered by her wealthy father in flagrante delicto with Booster, accused him of rape. The confrontation late in Act One between father and son over the latter’s betrayal of his parents’ values is alone worth the price of admission.
As Becker, Thompson once again demonstrates his ability to bring dignity, strength, and sensitivity to men of authority, while Dirden captures both Booster’s defiance and guilt in responding to his disillusioned father. Still, this scene, coming when it does, creates a structural imbalance since nothing afterward is remotely as explosive; the second act, while always interesting, is anticlimactic, never rising to the emotional heights achieved in the first. Making Act Two more problematic is the fate of a central character, disclosed near the end, that seems unearned.
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| John Douglas Thompson, Michael Potts, Anthony Chisholm, Brandon J. Dirden. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Paul Gallo, who also designed the Off-Broadway production, has created a striking setting representing the seedy, crumbling interior of what must once have been an attractive, wood-accented store, set on a street corner whose apex is up center; we see the street outside, including the cars parked there, through the large windows upstage. Jane Cox has done her inimitable best to create atmospheric lighting, Toni-Leslie James’s costumes are right out of the mid-70s, and Darron L West’s jazz-inflected sound design adds immeasurably to the world on view.
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| Harvy Banks, Michael Potts, Brandon J. Dirden, Andre Holland. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
As with all of Wilson’s plays, Jitney is like a boxing ring for champion actors, and, with Santiago-Hudson’s coaching, this production is a slugfest of performance give and take. A minor caveat: there’s so much high-octane acting one wishes the actors could now and then step on the brakes.
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| Michael Potts, John Douglas Thompson, Anthony Chisholm, Keith Randolph Smith, Andre Holland. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
There may be no jitneys in New York but there are plenty of other ways to get to the MTC. It’ll be well worth the ride.