103 (2018-2019): Review: ORDINARY DAYS (seen October 18, 2018)

"Four Bites of the Big Apple"

Ordinary Days, Adam Gwon’s bookless, sung-through, chamber musical, is one of those intimate little shows that has gained something of a cult following with its depiction of young strivers seeking love and fulfillment within the bustle of New York City. Following its 2008 premiere in London’s Off West End, it was given an admired Off-Broadway production by Roundabout in 2009 and has had multiple international stagings since then. Its first New York revival, kicking off the Keen Company’s 19th season, is enjoyably well done but nothing notably out of the ordinary. 

Whitney Bashor, Kyle Sherman. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Performed on a utilitarian set of black platforming and translucent cube-like enclosures (one of them hiding its piano, reed, and bass orchestra, led by John Bell), it’s about two couples. One is Deb (Sarah Lynn Marion) and Warren (Kyle Sherman), the other is Jason (Marc delaCruz) and Claire (Whitney Bashor). A flip phone reminds us that it’s 2007. 

Warren’s a gay, sweet-natured, somewhat nerdy, aspiring artist who does odd jobs (like cat-sitting and handing out flyers) for a trust fund-wealthy artist. Deb’s a sassy-mouthed grad student who’s at her wit’s end because she’s lost her loosely bound book of research notes for a thesis on Virginia Woolf. Warren finds the notes, notices Deb’s email address, and arranges to meet her at the Metropolitan Museum to return them.

Their bumpy friendship begins when the distressed Deb has a rude (and rather unconvincing) way of showing her appreciation, calling Warren a “fucking weirdo.” Of course, as they discuss art and aspirations, they eventually resolve their mutual issues as they discover “the big picture” of their mutual ambitions.

Kyle Sherman, Sarah Lynn Marion. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Jason and Claire are seriously in love. He lives 14 blocks away and wants to be closer, so they agree on his moving in with her. This, though, causes their relationship to stumble. Because of tensions Claire’s feeling but that we can’t at first fathom, his proposal that they marry causes their break up. Only later, when Claire sings about it, do we learn the sad reason boy has lost girl. Of course, there’s still time before the final curtain for boy to win girl again.

Sarah Lynn Marion, Kyle Sherman. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Each couple’s story is enacted separately from the other in alternating scenes. While the couples never actually meet, they now and then pass each other as people occupying the same urban space. The thinness of Gwon’s plotting is not substantially enhanced by these unsurprising characters, nor are the experiences they encounter notably illuminating. It’s all pleasant enough but there’s a been-there, heard-and-seen-that feeling that simply fails to ignite.

Whitney Bashor, Marc delaCruz. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

The burden of maintaining our interest lies in the sequence of Gwon’s narratively-oriented songs, whose clever lyrics define who’s singing them and provide the expository background. A couple of numbers stand out from the 14 heard in this revival, one of those that most delighted me being “Calm,” a rapid patter song Deb performs while standing in a crowded subway car as she fights to find calm amidst all the pressures she’s feeling.

The excellence of Sarah Lynn Marion’s lightly comic rendition is matched by Whitney Bashor’s moving expression of Claire’s “I’ll Be Here,” the 11 o'clock number in which we learn what’s behind Claire’s commitment issues. Admittedly, despite the reason being a contrivance that expects the knee jerk response it receives, it’s still hard not to feel a lump in your throat when you hear it.

Too many of the other numbers, though, are in the generic, faux-Sondheim mode of narrating rhyming exposition to a steady beat. Their witty lyrics are often a delight but the melodies tend to bleed into one another.

Sarah Lynn Marion, Kyle Sherman. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Jonathan Silverstein’s direction elicits all the right emotional notes from his appealing cast, whom he moves about with spirited élan. The performers have charm, fine voices, and the acting skills to bring their songs to life. Visually, though, Steven C. Kemp’s neutral set is too bland, and Anshuman Batia’s lighting, despite his use of marquee light strips, could do more to kick up the effect. Jennifer Paar provides amusingly kooky clothes for Deb and Warren; Claire and Jason, not so much.

Marc delaCruz, Kyle Sherman, Sarah Lynn Marion, Whitney Bashor. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

What most catches your eye comes when, near the end of this 80-minute show, Deb and Warren toss dozens of colored pages (his art and her notes) into the air, creating a vivid paper rainstorm. At that moment, the too frequently ordinary Ordinary Days becomes extraordinary.

Kyle Sherman, Sarah Lynn Marion. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

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Ordinary Days

Clurman Theatre/Theatre Row

410 W. 42^nd St., NYC

Through November 17

62 (2019-2020): Review: FELIX STARRO (seen August 28, 2019)

"He Played His Part in San Francisco"

In the spring of 2013, the Public Theater produced a dynamic Off-Broadway musical called Here Lies Love, set in the Philippines. It dealt with that Pacific nation’s political situation during the days of Fernando and Imelda Marcos, especially the latter. Cast with a nearly all-Filipino company, it was the product of David Byrne, one-time frontman of the Talking Heads, who’s neither Filipino or Filipino American. 

In fact, until now, we’re informed, no Filipino American has ever written an Off-Broadway musical, so the May-Yi Theater Company’s Felix Starro, with book and lyrics by Philippines-born and raised Jessica Hagedorn, and music by Fabian Obispo, is, in this regard at least, a pioneer.  

Alan Ariano. All photos: Richard Termine.

Unlike Here Lies Love, however, whose infectious title song still bangs around in my head, the much darker Felix Starro is far from sparkling, although its subject matter is provocative enough to unsettle your innards. Based on a short story of the same name by Lysley Tenorio, it tells of the title character (Alan Ariano, appealing but a bit young for the part), an aging specialist in the practice of psychic surgery. That, for the unitiated, is a fraudulent, pseudo-scientific form of faith-healing that enjoyed particular popularity in the Philippines, beginning in the 1940s. It also took root in Brazil, and has had celebrity advocates like Shirley MacLaine, who’s mentioned in the script. 

If you’ve never heard of psychic surgery, or seen video of it in action, now is as good a time as any to check it out on YouTube, including a demonstration by James Rand revealing how it’s done. In brief, the practitioner, using only his bare hands, seems to reach into the patient’s body, drawing blood, and withdrawing the sufferer's “negativities” (Starro’s word)—in the form of bloody tissue—responsible for the patient’s ailment. Most debunkers claim that the patients’ benefits are placebo effects.

Nacho Tambunting.

Felix Starro is set in 1985, when Felix, a well-known but fading psychic surgeon in Baguio City, believing he’s nearing his end, comes to San Francisco with his 19-year-old grandson, Felix Starro, Jr. (Nacho Tambuntang, pleasant), called Junior, whom he’s training to succeed him. The senior Felix’s reputation is such—he was once a glittery TV star (as a flashy musical flashback reminds us)—that many in the Bay Area’s Filipino community want to use his pricey services.

Francisca Munoz, Caitlin Cisco, Alan Ariano, Diane Phelan.

Felix hopes to earn enough money to ensure his final days back home, disregarding the danger he’s in there from a local who holds him responsible for a relative’s death. Felix admits his fraudulence to the skeptical Junior but also believes he has a special gift, one Junior knows he himself does not.

Nacho Tambunting, Francisca Munoz, Alan Ariano.

Although he can afford better lodgings, Felix occupies a shabby hotel room he’s stayed at before because of its nostalgic value. Visitors include a young, gay man (Ryan James Ortega), suffering from AIDS, for which Felix is unable to do anything; a wealthy matron, Mrs. Delgado (Francisca Muñoz); and Crystal (Caitlin Cisco), the pregnant, unwed hotel maid. We actually see Mrs. Delgado undergo the gory procedure, after which she claims that (for the moment at least) all her pains have vanished.  

Francisca Munoz, Alan Ariano, Nacho Tambunting.

Felix’s hoaxes gradually catch up with him and he also finds himself in danger of losing his grandson, whose own need to survive requires him to use means no less fraudulent than his grandfather’s. While Felix is devoted to his homeland, Junior strives to leave its heat, poverty, and backwardness behind and stay, illegally, in the USA. He’s spurred on in this goal by his girlfriend back home, Charma (Diane Phelan), who keeps appearing in his imagination. In a major lapse, we never learn what Charma’s own plans for joining him are.

Francisca Munoz.

As instructed, Junior seeks out a florist named Flora Ramirez (the always excellent Ching Valdes-Aran), whose crooked sideline is getting aliens to pay a heavy price for false American identities. The Junior-Flora plotline therefore introduces the currently hot issue of illegal immigration, but in a shallow, passing way, including filling the rear wall with a projected image (design by Nick Graci) of hundreds of license-like photos. 

Ching Valdes-Aran, Nacho Tambunting.

The issue is more a momentary distraction than a meaningful grappling with the problem. Last I heard, ICE was not currently targeting San Francisco's Filipino immigrants. It's something of a stretch, but what happens in the play can only very loosely be extrapolated to the current situation at our borders. Even if you're a strong immigration advocate, you may not support Junior's strategy.

Francisca Munoz, Nacho Tambunting, and company.

Felix Starro is neither an in-depth look at psychic surgery nor of immigration policies (remember, the show is set in 1985). It also sometimes can’t make up its mind if it’s a musical or a drama. Ma-Yi artistic director Ralph B. Peña has created several theatrically interesting moments but does little to alleviate the straightforward, ploddingly dramatic scenes, which crawl along at a snail’s pace. 

Company of Felix Starro.

Many of the acceptably listenable but largely generic 17 numbers have a familiar Sondheim feeling, using the music to offer narrative information. Others are in various conventional styles with ordinary lyrics that won’t win any prizes for first-class rhyming, although a few songs have enough originality to linger a bit. One that might be cited is “Medley of Maladies,” listing various physical ailments, and Mrs. Delgado’s “Tango of Pain,” with its thumping Latin beat. 

Paolo K. Tirol’s orchestrations for keyboards, guitar, and drums sound fine in the Clurman Theatre’s intimate confines under the musical direction of Ian Miller, and the company’s singing and acting is satisfactory, if uneven. Don’t, however, expect a Lea Salonga to emerge from the ensemble.

Company of Felix Starro.

Brandon Bieber’s choreography, mostly in the form of heightened movement patterns than traditional dance, is well-executed by the small, seven-member ensemble, all of whom—apart from Ariano and Tambunting-- play more than one role. Costume designer Becky Bodurtha thus provides numerous costumes (and wigs) for her busy troupers. 

Felix Starro’s weakest contribution is Marsha Ginsburg’s determinedly dull, sickly green set, intended to suggest the dreary interior of a cheap room but also serving for multiple other locales, inside and out. Even Oliver Wasson's imaginative lighting can do little to alleviate the glumness. An upstage cubicle (functioning as a closet, bathroom, and room entrance) that the actors slide from side to side helps to slightly vary the space but, if any set could be said to be a distracting eyesore when something more abstract and imaginative was called for, this is it. 

If a viable form of psychic surgery for theatre existed where someone could slip their hand into a show’s entrails and pluck out its negativities, Felix Starro would clearly quality as a patient.

Felix Starr

Clurman Theatre/Theatre Row

410 W. 42^nd St., NYC

Through September 21

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INTERMISSION: A MOUNT AIRY STORY

INTERMISSION:

A MOUNT AIRY STORY

With two days off between shows, I spent the time with my wife, Marcia, and a female guest, at my weekend house in the Poconos, writing, going to the movies (20 STEPS FROM STARDOM and LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER), and eating out. We also spent Monday evening at the Mount Airy Casino and Resort for some low-level gambling. I’m not especially crazy about blowing my dough at the casino, but Marcia and our guest like to play Spanish 21, so while Marcia spent an hour and a half winning $10, and our guest lost $70, I occupied myself at the mindless Wheel of Fortune, losing $60. After hitting my limit while the women were still playing, I sat at an empty stool to watch their game.

A nice-looking young gaming table supervisor with a name tag saying “Robert” (I’ve changed his name), wearing a suit and tie, and sporting a Buffalo Bill goatee and mustache,  saw the pendant I wear around my neck and asked me what it was. I explained that it was an 1878 silver dollar; noting his facial hair, I added that it was much like what Buffalo Bill would have handled back in the day. He thought the reference amusing and asked, “Are you a coin collector?” “No,” I said, “but I used to wear an 18^th or 19^th-century gold Japanese coin that I lost in Italy a couple of years ago and I wanted something to replace it so my wife, who had one of these stashed away, gave it to me.” He was curious about the Japanese coin, and asked what it looked like. I made an oblong shape with my fingers, to which he responded, “A koban?” Now, this is something only someone fairly knowledgeable about coins or Japanese culture would know, so I asked how he came by this information. He said his wife was Japanese, and pointed her out.  I gazed down a row of empty tables—it was Monday night and business was slow—and could just barely see two Asian women standing at gaming tables. Robert's wife, the second one, was running a blackjack game; she was a croupier. I was pretty amazed because, while you see many Chinese and Korean folks in the Poconos and, especially, at the casino, finding a Japanese up here is as likely as hitting a jackpot. Just as everywhere else on the East Coast, even the Japanese restaurants don’t have Japanese workers. So, as someone with a special interest in Japan, I was intrigued not merely to run into someone Japanese but to find her working the tables at Mt. Airy. In Japan, land of group conformity, they say the nail that stands up must be struck down. No hammer seemed about to hit this nail.

Robert said he’d met her at Mohawk Valley Community College in upstate New York, that her name was Miyako (name changed), and that he’d lived with her in Japan for a time. I told him I was a specialist in Japanese theatre and, seemingly taken aback, he said, “Kabuki?” Bingo. Again, this is not something the average table supervisor (or whatever they’re called) would have known. He hadn’t actually been to a live performance in Japan, but had seen kabuki on TV and was very interested in it. I told him I’d written many books on it, which also seemed a big surprise. I asked if he knew any Japanese and he proudly used the basic words you say when you meet someone. I answered back to show (off) my credentials, and then gave him my card, which is decorated with a Japanese woodblock print showing a kabuki actor’s face. I explained the makeup to him, and he noted that he had a kabuki mask with makeup like this. (Kabuki itself rarely uses masks, but you can buy souvenir masks that have kabuki makeup painted on them.)   

Marcia had finished her game and was getting up to cash in her chips. I told Robert I would offer my greetings to Miyako, and walked to her table, waiting until she’d finished raking in the cards from the hand she’d just dealt. Speaking Japanese, I shouted out, to the dismay, annoyance, or shock of the assembled gamblers, “Miyako-san. My name is Leiter. I’m Robert’s very good friend. His really good friend. Please accept my best wishes.” She looked momentarily stunned and smiled, and then I rejoined Marcia, who had cashed in her windfall of a sawbuck.

But she wasn’t quite ready to leave, since she was up for the night and I’d lost only $60, leaving us a mere $50 in the hole. Now it was time to blow another $20 or $40 on the slots, so we marched around until she found a friendly-looking two cent machine. “Come on,” I said sourly, “you’re only going to waste more money. Let’s leave while we’re ahead. These machines barely pay anything.” “I’m not going to spend much, but I can’t leave without trying,” she answered. So, while her friend went to the ladies’ room, Marcia began to play. About one minute in, the machine lit up brightly with three columns of two corns each, and the numbers declaring her winnings started to mount, looking like they’d never stop. We couldn’t figure out what the three rows of double corns meant on the face of the machine, so we had to wait until the rapidly changing electronic numbers ceased rising and the bells and whistles stopped belling and whistling. When they did, they came to a grand total of $91 and change. Woo hoo! We’re perpetual losers, so this humongous total seemed like manna from heaven. When Marcia’s friend returned I gave her 40 lashes for not being there when we broke the bank. We left the joint having covered my losses and with a few greenbacks to spare. We had put a dent (actually, a scratch) on our overall wagering losses, and felt like we’d won a million.

Later that night, back at the house, I got a Facebook friend request. When I checked, I realized it was Robert from the casino, but with a different name. There, indeed, on his profile picture, was the mask he’d mentioned. I confirmed his request and sent him a message telling him to read my blogs. Now I have a FB friend who’s a table supervisor at a major casino, not someone I’m likely to have met in the ordinary course of events (what is the ordinary course of events?) I’m sure I’ll never recoup the money I’ve lost at Mt. Airy, but yesterday, Mt. Airy paid off, and not just in cash.

25. Review of A PICTURE OF AUTUMN (June 6, 2013)

25. A PICTURE OF AUTUMN

 

 

If anyone wants a perfect example of how direction, casting, and design can rescue a little-known play from oblivion they need only visit 59E59 to see the exceptional production of CORNELIUS, J.B. Priestley’s failed 1935 play. On the other hand, a forgotten play can sometimes be good enough to capture one’s attention even when given an only passable interpretation, as can be demonstrated by a trip to the Mint Theatre on W. 43^rd Street; there, another midcentury British play, N.C. Hunter’s A PICTURE OF AUTUMN, which previously received only a single Sunday night tryout performance at the Duke’s Theatre in London in 1951, is on display. Even with very strong reviews by the London critics, no commercial producer picked it up, and it languished for 62 years until finding its legs in this production. Hunter, although now rarely revived, went on to become a quite popular London dramatist, known to some as the “English Chekhov,” and, despite this version’s shortcomings, it is to the Mint’s credit that it has restored this lost play to the stage.

 

Outside 311 W. 43rd Street, where the Mint Theatre is located (on the third floor). The sign you see to the left is the only signage for the theatre.

            A PICTURE OF AUTUMN is reminiscent of such Masterpiece Theatre series as DOWNTON ABBEY, being set in the crumbling, overgrown, 60-acre Winton Manor, Wiltshire, an 18-bedroom pile built in 1762 , where the aging residents, Lady Margaret Denham (Jill Tanner); her husband, Sir Charles Denham (Jonathan Hogan); and Charles’s brother, Harry (George Morfogen) are living out their days miles from the nearest village, with no automobile or phone and only a single, eccentric servant, the 73-year-old Nurse (Barbara Eda-Young). Lady Margaret is finding the maintenance of the huge house, which is falling apart, increasingly tiring and expensive, while her dullish spouse spends his days napping in an easy chair by the fire, and his brother occupies himself by shooting pigeons and recording the daily weather in a ledger. Into this den of decrepitude come, for a holiday, the Denham offspring, the stiffly businesslike Robert (Paul Niebanck) and his wife Elizabeth (Katie Firth), Robert’s footloose and usually broke brother, Frank (Christian Coulson); and Felicity (Helen Cespedes), Robert and Elizabeth’s pretty teenage daughter, who looks strikingly like Harry’s late wife, dead these 60 years.

            Robert is seriously determined to have his parents sell the manor, and even has a technical college ready to acquire it. This sets up the central conflict when he tries to convince his parents and uncle of the wisdom of selling the property and moving to smaller lodgings elsewhere. The arguments shift back and forth, and finally, when Harry has a surprising change of heart, the Denhams decide to leave. At the end of the second act, on the day when all are packed and ready to depart, Harry makes a grand gesture related to obliterating the past, and the consequences result in act three, with things more or less returned to the status quo.

            Hunter has captured the sense of a class in decline, their apparent uselessness set off in sharp contrast to a rising postwar business ethic. Even more sharply limned is his picture of lives in decline, as age takes its inevitable hold, creeping into people’s hearts the way the ivy threatens to do to Winton Manor. And the eternal problem of children learning how to tactfully look out for aging parents is equally well depicted. Robert, the son who wants to have his parents sell the house, is reminiscent of Lopakhin in Chekhov’s THE CHERRY ORCHARD, yet he realizes with poignancy toward the end that his approach to life has lost him the affection that his shiftless brother, the Gaev-like Frank, has gained by his carefree irresponsibility. The play’s central situation is a bit passé, but the various character relationships and casually realistic dialogue are very well done, and there are some excellent comic nuggets here and there. It’s rather odd that the play was recognized for its quality writing and could not find someone willing to take a chance on it, but it’s clear from even this so-so production that the play deserved an afterlife. The coming storm in British playwriting of the 1950s represented by the “angry young men” movement initiated by John Osborne was still a few years away, and first-class British actors of the Gielgud-Evans type could have done wonders for these roles.  

            All three acts (remember three-act plays?) transpire in the grand living room, suggested by designer Charles Morgan in the Mint’s tiny theatre by a white fireplace at stage right, a sweeping staircase at left center (I had no idea there was access here to an upper floor), and various armchairs, tables, and the like set against black walls on which formal paintings are hung. Overhead, a decorative white ceiling is suggested, although it serves only to flatten the sense of grandeur by being so low. Apart from the unexpected staircase, the effect is typical of make-do, low-budget Off-Broadway stagecraft. This extends to the costumes, which, while suggestive of the period, lack that special feeling of authenticity in tailoring and design so remarkably evident in CORNELIUS. (A similar comparison can be made between the relative degrees of scenic imagination offered by the two productions.)

            There is nothing particularly noteworthy in Gus Kaikkonen’s direction, and some minor things that I wish could have been avoided. It would have been helpful, for example, if, when Harry enters with a pigeon he has shot, a prop that was not so clearly a stiff, stuffed bird could have been found. And why must people speak loudly around others who are dozing, as if nothing they are saying could possibly be overheard?

            What most sets this production off from CORNELIUS, though, is the general lack of inspiration in the acting. Jill Tanner as Lady Denham is authentically British and she does a suitable, if not especially memorable, job in capturing her aristocratic character’s quiet respectability, but only veteran American actor George Morfogen, as the octogenarian Harry, brings with him real dramatic energy with his charm, intelligence, sensitivity, and vitality. Barbara Eda-Young, whom I remember as a beautiful young actress, here divests herself of all glamour to play the crone-like comic maidservant, who walks about singing religious hymns, but her characterization is superficial and her working-class accent unconvincing. Paul Niebanck is competent as the aggressively serious Robert, and Katie Firth is mildly effective as his forbearing wife, who married him when she was really in love with Frank, but the rest of the cast, with their on and off accents, is merely ordinary. I hate to have to say it again but CORNELIUS has set a benchmark and A PICTURE OF AUTUMN, for all its dramaturgic quality, simply doesn’t get near enough as a production to challenge it.

108. Review of THE GLASS MENAGERIE (October 2, 2013)

108. THE GLASS MENAGERIE

 

When intermission arrived during the Booth Theatre’s smash hit revival of Tennessee Williams’s eternally beautiful THE GLASS MENAGERIE, I spent the time re-reading on my Iphone Ben Brantley’s A+++ review in the New York Times, one of many that agreed that this was a revival for the ages. As Mr. Brantley put it, the production “promises to be the most revealing revival of a cornerstone classic for many a year to come,” with “career-defining performances” by Cherry Jones as Amanda Wingfield and Zachary Quinto as Tom. Why wasn’t I feeling “the breath knocked out of” me, as Mr. Brantley predicted; why was I not being as emotionally shattered as I have by other productions of this frequently revived play? And why did two women seated in my row, who must have spent a fortune for their tickets (a friend of mine paid over $200 for his), not return after act one?

 

 

From left: Zachary Quinto, Cherry Jones, Celia Keenan-Bolger. Photo: Michael J. Lutch.

            Director John Tiffany, to his credit, has sought to break free of the relatively substantial scenery so common to the play’s productions ever since its 1944 Chicago debut prior to its New York premiere in 1945. As Tom’s opening monologue declares, “The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic.” Alluding to Jim O’Connor, the Gentleman Caller of act two, he notes that only that one character is to be considered realistic, “being an emissary from a world of reality that we were somehow set apart from.”

These and similar signposts in the text have inspired set designer Bob Crowley to abandon walls entirely, as well a naturalistic fire escape entrance into the apartment; instead, he has provided some simple platforming, with a table, chairs, and wooden screen at stage right, a large couch and small cabinet for Laura’s glass “menagerie” at center, and an expressionistic fire escape at left that ascends into infinity in jagged forced perspective. Memory’s vast spaces are suggested by a black drop at the rear, thus allowing us to focus on the actors. According to what I’d read in the reviews, there were pools of dark liquid downstage of the platforms; I say this because, seated in row F, I couldn't see them without standing.
 

This stripped-down visual approach left me missing the sense of period a more considerable environment would have provided. As many previous revivals have shown, it is certainly possible to create an imaginatively theatrical impression of the Wingfields’ cramped and rundown apartment without replicating it in detail, and even without solid-seeming walls. (Just Google THE GLASS MENAGERIE and then click on Images.) Similarly, I question the decision to suggest that the photo in a doughboy’s uniform of Amanda’s long-gone husband, the “telephone man who fell in love with long distances,” is somewhere out in the auditorium, forcing the actors to look out there when referring to him. Tom, of course, calls him the play’s fifth character, and without his constant presence overseeing the action, where we can see him, the play is robbed of an important dimension.

Mr. Crowley also designed the costumes, which are more or less acceptable for the 1930s, but Amanda’s old white cotillion dress, which she pathetically dons in an effort to recapture her days as a Southern belle so as to impress the Gentleman Caller, is too overdone with frills and furbelows; while supposed to be rather sad in its tattered glory, it seems distractingly farcical.

Natasha Katz’s lighting, despite its eloquence when illuminating the Wingfield apartment, begins to pall when it has only the same black curtains backing all the action. With all the fire escape business and the references to the nearby Paradise dance hall, the lack of some magical aura of neon jazziness coming from offstage seems especially surprising. There is also a considerable amount of appropriately moody music, composed by Nico Muhly, to the degree that the play sometimes resembles a film in the way music is used to underline the action; sound designer Clive Goodwin, though, eschews familiar period music when it might have proved useful, thereby once again distancing the play from its particular time and place in what is perhaps an effort to universalize it. But since Williams so specifically makes time and place a driving force (the Depression, workers’ salaries, World War II), without the kind of aural markers that elicit emotional responses to those dark days the play is greatly weakened.

            To heighten the poetic feeling further, movement specialist Steven Hoggett has inspired the actors, at various moments, to use their bodies and arms with dance-like expressiveness, as when Laura and Amanda set the table; such movements are made even more evocative by the infrequent use of actual props, which are often mimed. Laura’s collection of glass animals is represented by a single tiny unicorn, which sometimes gets its own narrowly focused spot shining through it onto Laura’s face. When Tom finishes his opening monologue he seems to be thrust from the fire escape into the living room, as if crashing through the barrier between his memories and his present state of being. These touches, including Laura’s first appearance, when she magically emerges from the couch, to which she returns at the end, add a touch of artful whimsy to the proceedings. They are, however, relatively infrequent, and, despite their presence, the acting, for the most part, remains solidly rooted in realism, heightened as it often may be. Then again, director Tiffany has very carefully calibrated the pacing, giving the performances a musical substructure that works to their advantage.

 

            Ever since Laurette Taylor, making a comeback from alcoholism, introduced the self-dramatizing, maternally smothering Amanda Wingfield, constantly recalling her life in genteel society, her performance has been considered the role's benchmark for all later actresses. Writing in Catholic World, critic Euphemia Van Rensselaer Wyatt said that Ms. Taylor “has discovered the Duse method of making the most delicate delineation indelible. She seems to speak in whispers yet can be heard in the farthest seat in the balcony; her Southern accent is never accented and yet it colors not only her diction but her gestures; she appears too fluttery to be sure of her next line yet she dominates imperceptibly the whole action. Her gentleness may appear flabby but it is indestructible. . . . She is a presence, pathetic, comic and tragic that her son can never forget—nor her audience.”

Some of the greatest actresses of our time have assayed the part, and many have succeeded gloriously, but Cherry Jones’s Amanda is being lauded as one of the greatest, if not the best that veteran critics have ever seen. I’m a devoted fan of Ms. Jones’s, and have always been extremely impressed by her creations; it is impossible to deny that her Amanda is a powerful, incisive, authoritative, funny, and often beautiful piece of work; many of her readings, combined with perfect timing, a grand voice, and a magnolia-thick Southern accent, highlight the lines with new insights. But her emphasis on Amanda as a larger-than-life eccentric, one whose behavior sometimes borders on the bizarre, makes her hard to sympathize with. For all the fluency of her movements, Ms. Jones's big-boned physical presence lacks fragility and the urgency of her plight never quite comes off. It is this plus her tendency toward the uncomfortably neurotic, I think, that robs the production of the poignancy and pathos it requires.

            Although he has been widely lauded, a small number of critics have found Zachary Quinto’s Tom too overtly gay, as if he were channeling the playwright himself (Tom is, of course, based on Thomas Lanier “Tennessee” Williams), but I wasn’t particularly aware of anything overdone in this regard. On the other hand, Mr. Quinto’s readings of Tom’s lyrical passages, delivered in an attempt at poetical panache, don’t always ring true; this was made especially apparent when, speaking a line in the manner of his friend, Jim, he suddenly sounded like a real person. Tom’s confrontations with Amanda in this production are sometimes very harsh, and these moments are quite effective in conveying the frustrations of the characters and how uncomfortable and angry they make each other, but I didn’t see anything else in his performance that raised it to the landmark status others have conferred on it. On the contrary, the impression he left was merely ordinary.    

            As Laura, Celia Keenan-Bolger is convincing as the pathologically shy Laura, who hobbles about with one foot turned in to suggest the limp that has crippled her both physically and emotionally. Laura’s classic scene with the Gentleman Caller, sensitively played by Brian J. Smith, does not disappoint, but, then again, I can’t remember any production where it failed to work, even the two college productions I’m familiar with.

            THE GLASS MENAGERIE is not as delicate as the creatures the title brings to mind; good acting and direction can make it work even when no stars are involved. And stars can sometimes do serious damage to it, as reportedly happened when Jessica Lange and Christian Slater received a drubbing in the 2005 Broadway version. In the present production, the stars are out again, and for all their brightness, they and the play are never quite in full alignment.

13 (2018-2019: Review: TIME'S JOURNEY THROUGH A ROOM (seen May 17, 2018)

"Fukushima, Mon Amour"

As I watched Dan Rothenberg’s fine-tuned staging for the Play Company of Time’s Journey through a Room (Heya ni Nagareru Jikan no Tabi / 部屋に流れる時間の旅)--Japanese playwright Toshiki Okada’s evocative, well-crafted, but externally undramatic play—it was difficult not to think of notable examples of Japan’s nō theatre: numbingly slow, emotionally controlled, narratively slight, and emphasizing a state of mind more than a dramatic action. Even its length—12 pages of script requiring 50 minutes to enact (75 minutes in its Japanese version)—and the existence of a ghost echo nō practice. 

 Kensaku Shinohara, Yuki Kawahisa. Photo: Julietta Cervantes.

This somber, three-character drama by director/playwright Okada (b. 1973), founder of the internationally respected avant-garde company cheltfitsch, also shares with nō not only certain structural similarities but a poetic preoccupation with the lingering effects of a past occurrence. In nō this is usually something that happened centuries ago but, in Time’s Journey through a Room, only a few years have passed since its inciting event, the Fukushima earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown of 2011. And, as with nō, many spectators are likely to find its tortoise-like pacing, lack of action, and inner-directed expressivity stultifying. Others will be moved by the throbbing trauma present beneath the surface's seeming placidity. 

The production opens with a striking, abstract image (not mentioned in the script) when, with the house darkened, a square, tunnel-like opening, whose shape is indicated only by thin bands of neon lighting, shimmers as sound designer Mikaal Sulaiman creates powerful rumbling effects, surely symbolizing the 2011 disaster.

When the play proper begins, a tall, slim woman, Arisa (Maho Honda), enters, dressed in dark blue jeans and sweater (the costumes are by Maiko Matsushima). Arisa, who speaks both in the first person to us and in dialogue with someone else, asks us to close our eyes in preparation for “the journey.” Her presence, and even the account she'll soon tell of being in transit, stuck on a bus, is reminiscent of the supporting character (called the waki) in nō, who often describes the journey he's currently undertaking before the main action begins.

When told to open our eyes, we see a sleekly modernist room (designed by Anna Kiraly and sensitively lit by Amith Chandrashaker). Its stage right wall is pierced by a small, deep window space, and its upstage wall is dominated by a large, hallway-like opening, part of it occupied by a translucent glass panel. Standing alone within the wall-less stage left area is a simple door frame.

Situated at our left on the bright, shiny, yellow floor, which the characters traverse in socks or bare feet, are a small, round table and two chairs, all white, while up center is the kind of stylish gray sofa you might see at Roche Bobois. The nō-like minimalist feeling is heightened by the absence, apart from a flower in glass of water (symbol of a new life?), of all decorative accessories.

Kensaku Shinohara, Maho Honda. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

We soon see Honoka (Yuki Kawahisa), the late wife of Kazuki (Kensaku Shinohara), her long, black hair in a braid and bangs, wearing a below-the-knees, knitted, beige dress as she moves about in choreographed patterns (movement credited to Lily Kind), while talking to Kazuki, who sits in a chair much of the time, his back to us. 

Honoka's ghost speaks of things she remembers, often asking the mostly silent Kazuki to confirm her memories, and expressing her happiness at seeing and hearing the life around her, even things she once disliked (like a baby’s crying). Lingering in a limbo-like existence that ties her to the past she can't forget, she reflects on events immediately after the earthquake and on how the event transformed her, bringing happiness to both herself and Kazuki, as if the catastrophe was going to change the world for the better. Although this enlightened feeling arrived before her death, it bears the mark of the search for transcendence or salvation that occupies many nō play ghosts.

Arisa begins to weave herself into the narrative, telling us of being on a bus stuck in traffic as she makes her way to Kazuki in this special room, where, we’re informed, outside sounds can’t be heard. Meanwhile, we learn from Honoka of the nostalgia she feels when recalling various trivialities involving her and Kazuki, like quarrelling over something “stupid,” before the earthquake struck.

Yuki Kawahisa, Kensaku Shinohara, Maho Honda. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

Arisa arrives, apologizes for her lateness, and engages in small talk with Kazuki during which we discover that Honoka died a year earlier, not because of the earthquake but, a few days later, from asthma. Honoka, for her part, continues her trip down memory lane, mentioning things like how such ordinary signs of life, like someone refilling a vending machine, after the earthquake filled her heart with love, not unlike how Emily in Our Town longingly mentions clocks ticking and other mundane things the living take for granted.

Arisa and Kazuki, beginning a new chapter in their lives, chat about happiness, their mutual attraction and their trepidation in facing the future, making it necessary to take things slowly. Kazuki reveals his gratitude for how the earthquake had made Honoka so optimistic about the better world that will follow in its wake, and talks of his plan to rewallpaper the room (which is actually wallpaper-less) because, for all his inability to forget the past, the living must keep changing. 

Honoka continues to recollect the past, expressing not only her post-disaster positivity but her belief, which Kazuki’s new relationship with Arisa puts in doubt, that the happiness she shared with him will never fade away. Time’s Journey through a Room casts a cynical eye on all of Honoka’s sanguine presumptions.

Yuki Kawahisa, Kensaku Shinohara, Maho Honda. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

Thus ends the script, although Rothenberg extends the action with three blackouts that, when the lights come on again, allow the actors to assume a series of tableaus suggestive of what follows. At the performance I attended, some audience members began to clap after the first blackout, thinking the play was over (it was but the performance wasn’t). When the lights came up after the third tableau there was a longer than usual hesitation as we waited to be sure it was okay to applaud.

Audiences seeking a play that provides specific information about the horrors of 2011 will have to look elsewhere. Okada, while inspired by what happened in Fukushima, has more universal concerns about dealing with tragedy. The events are only briefly referenced and the play, despite the colloquial realism of its dialogue (perfectly rendered into English by Aya Ogawa, my favorite Japanese theatre translator), is deliberately vague about just where this room is and how, given what we’ve seen in videos of the devastation wrought by the quake and tsunami, it could have escaped being damaged.

Kensaku Shinohara, Yuki Kawahisa, Maho Honda. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

The company, each member of which is a native-born Japanese, has been directed to perform in a cool, emotionally detached way. While never actually robotic—there’s always a suggestion of conviction behind the words—their cipher-like characters speak at a sedate pace, with abundant pauses, and, aside from Honoka’s relatively active behavior, with minimal movement. This approach also brings to mind the "quiet theatre" of Hirata Oriza.

While there are notable differences between this production and the 2016 Japanese one staged by the author, a rough idea of what’s involved—minus the Japanese version's unique props and droning and other unusual sounds—can be seen in this montage of clips from its international tour. One wonders, in fact, whether what’s lacking in the current staging is a more thoroughly integrated system of movement, sound, and speech.

Kensaku Shinohara, Yuki Kawahisa. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

The Play Company, led by Kate Loewald, deserves support for its commitment over the years to presenting cutting-edge work by contemporary Japanese playwrights. Time’s Journey through a Room is their third Okada play following Enjoy (2010) and The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise (2014). It’s also his third rumination on the 2011 disaster. 

For me, the aloof and measured manner of Okada’s play and its highly selective treatment of character and situation invite a cerebral rather than emotional engagement. That, in fact, is not unlike my response to certain (not all) nō plays, despite their austere physical and aural beauty. Time's Journey through a Room has something to offer but be prepared to go with your eyes wide open (except when you're told to keep them shut).

OTHER VIEWPOINTS:

Show-Score.com

Time’s Journey through a Room

A.R.T./NYC Theatres

502 W. 53^rd St., NYC

Through June 10

208 (2017-2018): Review: MY FAIR LADY (seen April 22, 2018)

“Enchantment Pours Out of Every Door”

If you’re just an ordinary man or woman seeking a show somewhere, far away from the cold night air, then you’ve got dozens of choices throughout the city. But if you’ve got a little bit of luck, a wallet full of cash, and are looking for something lavish, luscious, and abso-bloomin-lutely loverly, my advice is to get to Lincoln Center on time to see Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady.

Lauren Ambrose. Photo: Joan Marcus.

This is the 1955 show’s first Broadway revival since 1993, when Melissa Errico played the flower girl Eliza and Richard Chamberlain the egotistical phonetician. And it’s a must-see.

The production, smashingly staged at the Beaumont by the ever reliable Bartlett Sher (South Pacific, The King and I), is an exquisitely directed, designed, and performed rendition of this classic musical about the possibilities of human transformation, made even more resonant by its reflection of contemporary #MeToo concerns.

You may have often seen My Fair Lady before, and have grown accustomed to her face, but by the time the first of its two acts draws to a close you’ll feel seven stories high as enchantment pours out of every door.

The genius behind My Fair Lady’s place at the apex of mid-20th-century musical theatre lies in its unique combination of a remarkable score—both lyrics and music—combined with a surprisingly faithful adaptation of its source, Pygmalion, perhaps the most consistently appealing and provocative comedy George Bernard Shaw ever wrote. (For more on the plot, see my review of the recent Bedlam production of Pygmalion.)

One can only thank heaven for little miracles (to paraphrase a Lerner and Loewe song from another work) that My Fair Lady was written when book musicals with spoken scripts didn’t have to compete with sung-through shows.

There are many things that make this My Fair Lady a must-see, beginning with Michael Yeargan’s gorgeous sets. These brilliantly use the vast expanses of the Beaumont’s huge thrust stage by employing independent sliding units on a disk to represent the various London exteriors, from Covent Garden to the façade of Higgins’s house. All looks ravishing under the spell of Donald Holder's magnificent lighting.

Jordan Donica. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Then there’s Yeargan’s impressive version of the interior of Higgins's house, which slides forward from upstage, revealing a two-story drawing room cum library, with its richly paneled and book-lined walls, and a spiral staircase. When it revolves on the disk so that the action can flow continuously into other rooms, you appreciate the care (and expense) that went into creating this event.

Similarly breathtaking are Catherine Zuber’s Edwardian costumes, including everything from those worn by the poor cockneys to the flouncy red skirts of the music hall girls to the jaw-dropping accoutrements of the fashionably elegant upper-classes.

Norbert Leo Butz and company. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Of course, the ones we wait for are those for the “Ascot Gavotte,” where Zuber dresses the crowd in dazzling pale-silver, with Liza set off in a gown of white and black, with a large, circular white hat, ringed in black, worn on one side of her adorable head.

Norbert Leo Butz. Photo: Joan Marcus.

There are no weak links in the company, which includes a marvelously volatile Norbert Leo Butz as Alfred P. Doolittle. Butz dances, sings, and acts his butt off as Eliza’s bibulous, dustman father, self-styled representative of the “undeserving poor.” His “Get Me to the Church on Time,” memorably choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, deservedly stops the show.

Lauren Ambrose, Dame Diana Rigg. Photo: Joan Marcus.

As Higgins’s mother, the beloved Dame Diana Rigg, as magnetically regal as ever, makes every deeply-voiced word drip with wisdom and humor; veteran Allan Corduner’s Col. Pickering is a delightful moderating force between Higgins and Eliza; Linda Muggleston’s Mrs. Pearce is a stalwart steward of Higgins’s domain; and Jordan Donica as Eliza’s innocuous swain, Freddy Eynsford-Hill, sings “The Street Where You Live” gloriously.

Harry Hadden-Payton, Lauren Ambrose. Photo: Joan Marcus.

The tall, slender Harry Hadden-Payton is perhaps a bit youthful and insufficiently harsh as Higgins but he’s unquestionably dashing, distinguished, and charismatic. His songs were famously written so they could be spoke-sung for the non-singing Rex Harrison, My Fair Lady’s first Higgins, but Hadden-Payton displays actual musical ability when required.

Harry Hadden-Payton. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Stealing both the show and my heart, however, is the Eliza of redheaded Lauren Ambrose, giving an ambrosiac performance of charm, insight, warmth, defiance, passion, and humor that had me in tears at one moment, bursting with laughter at another. A fan of hers since her days on TV’s “Six Feet Under,” I had no idea she could sing so beautifully (I could have listened all night to her “I Could Have Danced All Night”) or that she had the dimensionality to bring so complex a role to life. But she nails her every requirement, from the guttersnipe to the duchess.

She’ll win your heart (and, I hope, a few awards) as she struggles to pronounce “the rain in Spain”; bust your gut when her accent and vocabulary slip while trying to impress the Ascot crowd; make you melt when, wearing a fabulous red robe, she stands alone, psyching herself up for the ambassador’s ball; thrill you with her grace and beauty when she arrives there; rouse your best instincts when she rallies against the supercilious Higgins; and wet your eyes when she walks out on Higgins at the end.

The old question about whether Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins need to fall in love for the show to work still gets people worked up. Shaw was convinced there was no need for a romantic relationship between them and that Freddy would be more up Eliza’s alley than Henry. Having the actors playing Higgins and Eliza as close in age as these are (Hadden-Patton is 37 and Ambrose—who looks much younger—is 40) may make us want them to connect as lovers but Ambrose makes it clear (to me, at least) that all she really wants from Higgins is his respect, not his kisses. When even that proves so difficult to achieve, I have no problem with her leaving this egotist to stew in his own purgatory of self-doubt. As she sang to herself earlier, “Just you wait, ‘enry ‘iggins, just you wait.” Well, the wait is over and her words have come true.

As readers of this blog know, I rarely get this worked up over a show. And I'm aware my opinion isn't universal; a tiny number even disapprove strongly. But when a gusher like this My Fair Lady erupts and splashes all over me, what choice do I have but to gush myself?

OTHER VIEWPOINTS:

Show-Score.com

My Fair Lady

Vivian Beaumont Theatre

10 Lincoln Center Plaza, NYC

Open run