123. Review of FUN HOME (October 21, 2013)

123. FUN HOME

 

 

 

Entrance to the Newman Theatre.

 

As I watched FUN HOME at the Newman Theatre, within the Public Theatre complex, I could sense the emotional connection between many members of the audience and the musical on stage. My theatre companion, who has a gay daughter, nudged me at one point and told me he’d been crying almost since the show began; the gay young man on the left of me whooped and slapped his knee at every joke and dabbed his eyes at the more touching moments; and I noted a gay acquaintance brushing a tear from his cheek as he moved up the aisle at the end. The subject matter, adapted from a best-selling, award-winning, 2006 graphic novel of the same name by lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel, was apparently very familiar to a large number of spectators (the friend who went with me had once tried to write a play based on it), but to ignorant me it was unexplored territory. (After doing some post-show research, I learned that FUN HOME is a very controversial book and that attempts have been made to remove it from certain public libraries and college course curriculums on the grounds that it is pornographic.)

 

Photo on left: Sydney Lucas and Michael Cerveris. Photo: Public Theatre. Photo on right: Beth Malone, Sydney Lucas, Michael Cerveris. Photo: Public Theatre.

 

 

From left: Beth Malone, Sydney Lucas, and Alexandra Socha. Photo: Public Theatre. 

            What I saw during the show’s 100 or so intermissionless minutes was the talented young director Sam Gold’s lovely staging of a show that uses considerable charm to relate a painful story of a sweet young lesbian's sexual coming of age, from the time of her childhood in a small, rural Pennsylvania town, to her college years at Oberlin, where she comes out of the closet, to her maturity as a successful writer-artist. In the latter guise, as the mature Alison (Beth Malone), she serves as an omnipresent narrator, watching the experiences of her younger selves (played, in a stroke of conceptual creativity, by two other actresses, called Small Alison and Medium Alison). Plays and musicals with gay coming-of-age themes are far from unique, of course, but in this case Ms. Bechdel’s autobiographical tale takes on a much darker and deeper hue than usual because it involves the story of her father, Bruce (Michael Cerveris), a closeted gay mortician and high school English teacher who is more obsessed with restoring his historic Gothic Revival home than with being a father or a husband, despite outwardly seeming ideal at the latter responsibilities. Fun Home refers not to his house, but to Bruce's funeral parlor, where the three Bechdel kids, Alison, Christian (Griffin Birney), and little John (Noah Hinsdale), freely enjoy themselves, including by hiding in the caskets, which they take for granted.

 

 

From left: Noah Hinsdale, Griffin Birney, Sydney Lucas. Photo: Public Theatre.

Bruce's gayness is intimated fairly early by his flirtatious behavior with a nice-looking student named Roy (Joel Perez, who plays all of Bruce's liaisons) during Small Alison’s childhood (the adorable Sydney Lucas). His struggles with his sexual passions lead this tortured soul to express his self-loathing by sometimes behaving nastily to his long-suffering wife, Helen (Judy Kuhn), or by occasionally tyrannizing his children, but never to the point where we forget his love for them. In college, Medium Alison (Alexandra Socha), who has only recently accepted her own gayness and begun a relationship with a college friend, Joan (Roberta Colindrez), learns of her father’s sexual interests from her fed-up mother, and it is only a short time afterward that Bruce—who, unlike his daughter, remains reluctant to accept his sexual orientation—steps in front of a truck and is killed in what Alison is certain was a suicide. She had never been able to break through Bruce’s reserve about his sexuality; when he gives her a book about Colette, the lesbian writer, and she wonders if it means he is somehow trying to reach out to her, he remains noncommittal. Through her illustrated memoir, Alison seeks to come to terms with his death and their complex relationship, partly indicated by small things like Bruce’s constant attempts to feminize Small Alison by demanding that she wear a barrette. 

 

 

From left: Joel Perez, Michael Cerveris, Beth Malone. Photo: Public Theatre.

            The libretto, which begins during Alison's childhood, moves around freely in time and space, exploring its issues in the form of anecdotal memories and feelings; since important information is telegraphed early on, there is no strong dramatic arc or suspense, but book and lyric writer Lisa Kron has managed to craft a continually engrossing narrative that expertly mingles comedy and drama. Although Jeanine Tesori has contributed many quality songs (not, unfortunately, listed in the program), this is not a sung-through musical; the dialogue sequences, however, are accompanied by a constant musical background that provides a rhythmic and melodic propulsion to the performance. Much of Ms. Tesori's score, like so many nowadays, has that Sondheimesque quality of emphasizing narrative progression, so that the music serves to advance the story rather than being something to be enjoyed on its own. She nonetheless is gifted enough to allow some numbers to stand out for both their narrative and musical artistry. One of these concerns Alison's being turned on by the sight of a butch lesbian delivery woman and her heavy set of keys. Another is a parody TV commercial for the family funeral home. And Ms. Kuhn sings a wonderful song to Medium Alison about living one's life for happiness.

 

 

Roberta Colindrez (left) and Alexandra Socha. Photo: Public Theatre.

            David Zinn’s set is an open environment showing the brick rear wall of the stage (or a simulacrum of it) with furnishings spread out across the expansive, polished wood floor, to be brought into focus as necessary by the use of a turntable built into the deck. Later in the show, the entire rear wall is covered with wallpaper and wainscoting, an allusion to Bruce’s home restoration project. Mr. Zinn’s costumes vary appropriately with the periods presented, and Ben Stanton’s lighting does a superb job of capturing mood and atmosphere in the way it highlights various areas of the stage. There are a number of projections, designed by Jim Findlay and Jeff Sugg, but for some reason, the designers and director chose not to use images from Ms. Bechdel's book, except for one shown toward the end. Since the show alludes to her cartoons, and she always carries a drawing pad, a few more would have been welcome, such as the one in the book where Bruce supports Small Alison on his feet as she poses with arms spread like an airplane, a moment memorably recaptured in the play.  

 

 

Photo: Public Theatre.

 

            The three children who play the young Bechdels are all terrific, with special kudos earned by little Sydney Lucas in a demanding role that calls on her singing, dancing, and acting skills. Alexandra Socha’s Medium Alison is always honest and grounded, as is Beth Malone as the brooding, observant mature Alison, a slim, bespectacled, wraith-like figure with short-cropped hair, standing in the shadows dressed in jeans and maroon polo shirt, holding her large drawing pad, and choosing how to caption the moment she is remembering; judging by online photos, she presents a rather good likeness of Ms. Bechdel. Michael Cerveris, wearing a red wig, is an ideal embodiment of Bruce, singing beautifully and acting truthfully. Judy Kuhn, as Helen, is in excellent voice, while Roberta Colindrez is perfectly believable as Joan.

            Despite the considerable talents of all concerned, and the meaningfulness of the material, with its sensitive handling of a subject rare in musical theatre, something about the show kept me from becoming as emotionally invested in it as so many others. Except perhaps, for the big, powerful number sung by Bruce (in a marvelous moment for Mr. Cerveris) toward the end before he steps in front of that truck, I struggled to go beyond objective appreciation into subjective involvement. This is surely my own limitation (an unconscious hetero bias, perhaps?), and not the show's, and I'm sure the reviews will all note how moved the critics were; I really wish, though, that I too were dabbing my tears when FUN HOME ended.

122. Review of THE PLAY'S THE THING (October 20, 2013)

122. THE PLAY’S THE THING
 

The entrance to the Storm Theatre, in the basement of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Morningside Heights.

During the 1920s Budapest was a major European theatrical hub, its leading playwright being the Hungarian Jew Ferenc Molnar. His plays enjoyed an international reputation, the best known probably being LILIOM, the inspiration for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical CAROUSEL. Rivaling it in popularity has been THE PLAY’S THE THING, which—as adapted by P.G. Wodehouse—had its world premiere in Great Neck, NY, in 1926, shortly before opening on Broadway for a hit-length run of 313 performances. It has subsequently had several New York revivals, both on and Off Broadway, two of which I vaguely recall seeing. New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson wrote of the 1926 staging: “the enjoyment is not always constant, but Molnar’s complete relaxation, his remarkable understanding of situation, his coruscating dialogue, his sly innuendo refresh and exhilarate.” Seeing it now at the tiny Storm Theatre, located in the basement (I’m tempted to say catacombs) of the imposing Cathedral of Notre Dame at 114th Street and Morningside Drive, does not inspire me to pen a similar encomium, although the Storm deserves support for resuscitating the play as part of its Molnar project, which plans to revive two more of the playwright’s plays.

 

Alexis Kelley and Brian Linden. Photo: Michael Abrams.

 

            The play (THE PLAY AT THE CASTLE in Hungarian) takes place in a count's castle on the Italian Riviera where star actress, or prima donna, as she is called, Ilona Szabo (Alexis Kelley), is staying, and which is visited a day earlier than expected by leading Budapest playwright Sandor Turai (Joe Danbusky), his collaborator, Mansky (Andy Allis), and the handsome young composer Albert Adam (Jeff Kline), in love with Ilona. The walls are so thin that this trio overhears the actress in a compromising conversation with the romantic actor, Almady (Reginald Owen), a married man with four children. Although Ilona soon dismisses Almady, Albert is driven to distraction with jealousy, but the gifted Sandor, who needs Albert to write music for his new play, concocts a scheme whereby, overnight, he writes a one-act to be performed at a castle entertainment. In it the dialogue from the illicit lovers’ conversation is employed to convince Albert that what he overheard was actually one of Sandor’s plays being rehearsed and not the conduct of an illicit encounter. Two other characters take part in the play: the buffoonish Mr. Mell (James Henry Doan), who struggles to stage manage the evening's entertainment, and the dryly solicitous Johann Dwornitscheck (Spencer Aste), the accommodating footman who seems a direct steal of the Waiter in Shaw’s YOU NEVER CAN TELL.

            Presented in the three-quarters round under the direction of Peter Dobbin, the low-budget set, designed by Josh Iacovelli, is unable to do more than hint at the glamor of what should evoke a lavish environment. This is one of those plays whose elegance demands an exquisite physical representation. The steps and platform at one end of the room, replete with medieval arch and glassless. arched window openings, was seen in last season’s LE CID; it’s too bad that Michael Abrams’s lighting can’t keep the shadows cast by the arch and windows from being visible on the sky drop. Most of the men dress in a semblance of 1920s formal evening wear or, during the day, off-white linen suits; the one area where the revival approaches the required gossamer beauty is Ilona’s costumes, attractively designed by Molly Mastrandrea.  

            THE PLAY’S THE THING (available as a musical, ROUGH CROSSING, by Tom Stoppard) is often called a farce, and, at one time, it was also considered a risqué piece worthy of adult enjoyment.  Today’s audience would barely consider the material even mildly naughty but it’s still possible to detect vestiges of what might once have been hilarious here. I wish I could say, though, that the show I viewed raised more than an occasional titter, a word that reminds me of how Almady’s overheard description of what sounded like Ilona’s breast turns out to have been merely a reference to her shoulder. Are you tittering yet?
 

            Although it’s hard to appreciate the play’s charm and wit without the presence of veteran players gifted at portraying urbane ladies and gents stuck in some ridiculous situation, the play does wake up, if belatedly and all-too-briefly, during the last act’s fast-paced, expertly constructed play-within-the-play. In it, Molnar creates a challenging give-and-take between the masterfully manipulative Sandor and the desperate Almady, who must avoid his indiscretion being found out by his wife.

One of this play’s most admired features is its Pirandellian playing with the difference between illusion and reality, or between authenticity and artificiality; ironically, too much of the acting seems fake (except, as in the play-within-the play, when it’s supposed to be), and few performances rise above competence. Sandor is played by Mr. Sandusky with an appropriate combination of smugness and pseudo-sophistication, but it mostly remains on the same level throughout; he captures Sandor’s superior intelligence, but fails to make it continually diverting. Technically, the most challenging role is that of Almady, whom Sandor wishes to ridicule for his extramarital canoodling; during the long play-within-a-play scene—meant to satirize the florid style of 19th-century dramatist Victorien Sardou—Almady complains about being forced to speak the names of people and places containing multiple, hyphenated components. Mr. Linden (an ectomorph who, sorry to say, is anything but a matinee idol) manages to run off these memory-challenging tongue-twisters with admirable precision and timing; like so much else in this production, however, his work is earnest but fails to roll ‘em in the aisles. Ms. Kelly as Ilona is very attractive, but her voice is often shrill and her acting superficial.

            To sum up: if the play’s the thing, so must be the performance.

121. Review of JULIUS CAESAR (October 19, 2013)

121. JULIUS CAESAR

 

 

 

St. Ann's Warehouse, 29 Jay Street, in Dumbo. 

Although Orson Welles staged a remarkable modern dress production of JULIUS CAESAR in 1937, illuminating the play by setting it in the world of 1930s European Fascism, the vast majority of later productions have kept the play in some version of ancient Rome. None of the 15 influential productions described in my 1986 book, Shakespeare around the Globe: a Guide to Notable Postwar Revivals, has an idiosyncratic background, which is not to say that other productions have not had them. Just last season, the Brooklyn Academy of Music presented the Royal Shakespeare Company’s all-black staging, set in a an unnamed African country, and employed modern dress with hints of Roman togas.

Now an even more powerful British production has hit these shores, also in Brooklyn, with the Donmar Warehouse’s version, on view at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Dumbo. This one has an entirely female cast and is conceived as a rehearsal of the play inside a women’s prison. (A similar idea, but with a male company, is behind the acclaimed 2012 Italian film, Caesar Must Die.) The racially mixed company of 14 actors, whose best-known artist is the outstanding Dame Harriet Walter, playing Brutus, thrusts every bit of human energy into its relentless performance, staged by Phyllida Lloyd, with crystal-clear diction and consistently enlightening readings that make the play sizzle with life throughout its two intermissionless hours.

St. Ann’s, with its loading docks, rolling gates, and oversized, metal double doors, is the perfect venue for creating a prison-like environment. The audience is forced to wait on line outside and is admitted to an enclosed loading dock in batches of about 50 each, where uniformed guards oversee them as one of them issues a stern warning that cell phones will be confiscated if they aren’t turned off. When you do go in you are faced by banks of seats occupied by those who entered earlier. The same loading dock later becomes an important entryway during the play. The wall into which the dock’s rolling metal gate is set is lined with a catwalk and also has a guardroom behind glass windows, where the prison officials can keep watch over the proceedings.

Designer Bunny Christie deserves high marks for her imaginative use of the space, just as does Neil Austin for his exceptional lighting, which manages to create effects that seem appropriate to the instruments potentially available in a women’s prison. Ms. Christie has dressed the inmates’ in  sweatpants and hooded sweatshirts, accented here and there by individual touches, including Caesar’s beret and Brutus' long coat, make suitable substitutes for the togas and robes that usually encase the actors of this play. The camouflage gear and ski masks worn during the battle scenes, however, are now de rigueur for modern-dress Shakespeare.

This is a rapidly paced, high-energy, textually trimmed-down production, that wrings every bit of nuance out of the power politics that inform both the play and the world of prison life, with its shifting allegiances and cliques. Rubber knives and toy pistols and rifles stand in for swords and daggers as drum beats mark the shootings that occur; prison spotlights, manipulated by guards, illuminate some of the action; Caesar’s followers wear paper masks with his face on them; heavy metal electric guitar and percussion music (by Garry Yerson), played by inmates, highlights certain moments; red rubber gloves suggest hands steeped in blood; an actor portrays a vicious dog; the petite soothsayer (Carrie Rock) rides through the play on a tricycle, wearing a tutu; and video cameras portray the way in which politics exploits the media and vice versa.  Aiding immeasurably in the assured staging is the choreographed movement created by Ann Yee.

There are many inventive theatrical touches. For example, I was seated in the second row, center, and noticed that the center seat in the first row and the one behind it, next to me, were empty, which made me wonder why they were unoccupied for a sold-out show. That question was dispelled during the murder of Caesar (Florence Barber) in the Senate, when he was forced into the first row seat by the assassins; one of them came into my row and throttled him from behind as he was forced to drink something horrible from a blue plastic bottle and then stabbed multiple times. After the trusted Brutus pierced him, Caesar, lying on the floor, burst into hysterical laughter. It was as if the irony of Brutus’ action struck a cosmic funny bone in the dying leader; only then did he say, “Et tu, Brute?”

Dame Harriet, her figure slim and boyish at 63, wears her hair mannishly short, allowing her face, with its fascinating angles, to seem more expressive than ever; for all her macho qualities when playing Brutus, her natural sensitivity consistently informs her magnetic performance. She is matched by the much younger Cush Jumbo’s Mark Antony; Antony's clever manipulation of the mob in his funeral oration is sensational; later, Antony's command over them is magnificently staged as if he were a choral conductor, using physical gestures to raise and lower their emotional temperature as musical cues accompany his movements. There is also a remarkably potent Cassius in the person of Jenny Jules, whose vocal and emotional power never flags, while Frances Barber’s brutishly sinister Caesar is equally compelling and strong, belying Ms. Barber’s porcelain features; a scene when Caesar picks on Cassius for being suspiciously “lean and hungry” turns startlingly ugly when the ruler stuffs a donut into Cassius’ mouth and then bites down on it himself in a sadistically brutal kiss. Later, in a casually silent moment, when we eventually learn who in the prison’s population has been playing Caesar, we get an interesting insight in the way JULIUS CAESAR expresses the uses and abuses of power. Even smaller roles, like Clare Dunne’s Portia, are played to perfection in this exceptional revival. (Ms. Dunne, who also plays Octavius, wears a padded belly to suggest that the prisoner is pregnant.)

Regardless of its unusual theatrical gimmickry, this production remains steadfastly faithful to the play while both deepening and subverting its traditional meanings. All-male productions of Shakespeare—which, after all is how he was originally done—are no longer unusual (two are opening soon on Broadway), but all-female revivals are. Other recent ones, of HAMLET and TITUS ANDRONICUS, have been reported; such ventures can be done as well as this JULIUS CAESAR, I look forward to even more.

120. Review of BRONX BOMBERS (October 18, 2013)

120. BRONX BOMBERS

 

 

The Duke Theatre. 

The New York Yankees have been the subject of movies, TV shows, and even Broadway musicals. One of the most respected iterations of Yankee drama was the 2007 TV miniseries, The Bronx Is Burning, based on Jonathan Mahler’s book, Ladies and Gentlemen: The Bronx Is Burning, which covered the incredible 1977 championship season, focusing not only on the on-field action but on the off-and-on field warfare between feisty manager Billy Martin and the newly acquired slugger Reggie Jackson, with owner George Steinbrenner smack dab in the middle of the fireworks, which also included the city’s myriad social problems. Now Eric Simonson has taken that 1977 season and turned it into a play (“conceived by Fran Kirmser”), which he also directed, and which is playing at the Duke Theatre on 42nd Street. Mr. Simonson and Ms. Kirmser were responsible for two previous sports-centered plays, LOMBARDI and MAGIC/BIRD, both of them more effective than BRONX BOMBERS.   

 

 

From left: Christopher Jackson, John Wernke, Richard Topol, C.J. Wilson. Photo: James Leynse. 

The Duke is one of New York’s variable theatre spaces, a large room allowing for multiple seating arrangements. In this case the seats have been placed around all four sides of the square space, with two or three rows on three sides and five rows on another. Overhead, surrounding the space, designer Beowulf Boritt has placed replications of those iconic Yankee Stadium mezzanine arches, but the acting area is reserved for interior scenes, none on the playing field itself. The play begins in a room at the Boston Sheraton in June 1977, moves to the bedroom of Yogi (Richard Topol) and Carmen Berra (Wendy Makkena), shifts to a large banquet table in the Berra’s home, and ends in the Yankee’s locker room in September 2008, on the last baseball day at Yankee Stadium before it was torn down to be rebuilt.

            As the audience enters, it hears Bill White’s radio broadcast of a June 1977 game at Fenway Park; when the names of Mickey Rivers and Willie Randolph, among others, are mentioned, Yankee fans (among the only theatergoers who will eat up this over-sweetened play) will surely get an injection of nostalgia, but they are likely soon to be disappointed. (Allowance can be made for the anachronism of having present-day announcer Suzyn Waldman ask the audience to turn off its cell phones.) As the broadcast continues we hear about a dugout fight between manager Billy Martin (Keith Nobbs) and right-fielder Reggie Jackson (Francois Battiste); this spark ignites the play.

            In that Boston hotel room we meet Martin, Berra, Jackson, and team captain Thurman Munson (Bill Dawes); also occasionally present is a room service waiter (Christopher Jackson). Berra, the Hall of Fame catcher, who was then a coach, is trying to reconcile the feuding Martin and Jackson, whose conflict began when Martin pulled Jackson from the field when he thought the outfielder wasn’t hustling. Martin, tearfully frightened of being fired, is a volatile firecracker dressed in black cowboy gear and speaking in a Southern accent (although born and raised in Berkeley, California), while Jackson is an arrogant dude rigged out, as was his style, in a tight-fitting maroon suit making him look more like a pimp than a superstar. (The spot-on costumes are by David C. Woolard.) Berra, probably more famous today for his unintentional mangling of English syntax than for his catching brilliance, is the frustrated peacekeeper, hoping to keep Jackson from venting to the media. Every now and then, Munson, presented as another voice of reason, puts his two cents in, but not without being irritated by Jackson’s raising questions about their relative salaries. Wherever possible, playwright Simonson injects information well-known to baseball fans, such as Munson’s recent purchase of a plane; later, news of his eventual death in that plane is wrung for tears.

            So far, so good. A straightforward drama about a personality clash among super-famous, super-wealthy, and super-egotistic sports figures, with flaring tempers and smartass attitudes. Issues of race ("I'm a nigger to you," shouts Jackson to Martin) and money are brought to the floor and we sense the potential for interesting drama, even if the material is, for fans, overly familiar. Berra is doing his best to argue that personal issues must not interfere with the team’s unity, especially since the Yankees have a pristine tradition to uphold.

But then the playwright shifts gears sharply, taking us into Berra’s private life, and giving him an ulcer attack that brings on a dream sequence (cue the thunder, lightning, and fog) in which his wife, Carmen, hosts a dinner party around a large banquet table for Mickey Mantle (Mr. Dawes); Elston Howard (Mr. Battiste), the first black Yankee; Babe Ruth (C.J. Wilson); Lou Gehrig (John Wernke); Joe DiMaggio (Chris Henry Coffey); and Derek Jeter (Mr. Jackson. All, except for the overly good-looking, blue-suited DiMaggio, wear the carefully recreated uniforms of their eras; eventually, Jolting Joe changes into his uniform as well. These legendary dream figures, alive, dead, and one only three-years-old in 1977, represent the wide variety of Yankee personalities that make up the team’s legend, from flamboyant to reserved. While there to underline the idea that big egos, argumentative personalities, and monetary concerns (before and after free agency) are nothing new in the Yankee universe, these famous figures spend most of their time trading well-known anecdotes about their lives, and we even see Gehrig (whose close relationship with his mother is endlessly referenced) gradually succumb to the disease now known by his name. Unable to leave out anything that might bring a lump to your throat, Simonson even throws in a reference to 9/11.

The play becomes even more schmaltzy in the last scene, when Yogi is interviewed by a reporter (Keith Nobbs) on the occasion of the last Yankee game at Yankee Stadium, and he asks Derek Jeter to deliver the speech he, Yogi, had been asked to give on the field. It is Jeter’s actual voice we hear over the loudspeaker as the play draws to an end, as the legends gather around the large Yankee logo on the floor, with Lou Gehrig standing in its center. The play has gone from a dramatization of the personal conflicts of 1977 to a sentimental tribute to the Yankees legend.

One of the biggest problems in doing a work with such recognizable celebrities is finding actors who resemble them. It is rare that producers can cast someone as close to the original as, for example, Ray Fisher playing Muhammad Ali in FETCH CLAY, MAKE MAN. Fans familiar with the faces and body types of the players enacted in BRONX BOMBERS are likely to feel let down. Francois Battiste bears a slight facial resemblance to Reggie Jackson, but is much slighter and shorter than the real McCoy; it's hard to believe he could ever have hit over 500 home runs. Mr. Battiste looks nothing at all like Elston Howard, his other role. Happily his acting compensates for the discrepancy to some degree, and he does manage to express Jackson’s oversized personality, intelligence (an IQ of 160, he tells us), and huge self-image (he refers to himself as “the immensity that is Reggie Jackson”).

          Keith Nobbs faintly resembles Billy Martin, but he is not only far too young, he is much too short, looking more like a batboy than a ballplayer. Richard Topol (replacing Joe Pantoliano, who left because of “creative differences”) struggles valiantly to embody Yogi's  rough voice and clownish mannerisms, but his shuffling gait makes him seem more like someone with an incontinence problem than a onetime catching great. Mr. Simonson fills his mouth with so many Yogi-isms ("I made too many wrong mistakes back then") we may never have to watch another Aflac commercial.  

          Bill Dawes is sufficiently close to Thurman Munson and Mickey Mantle to get away with his impersonations, and C.J. Wilson brings so much boyish energy to his portrayal of the Babe that we can forgive how different he is from the model. Christopher Jackson is believable enough as Derek Jeter, but Chris Henry Coffey's movie-star looks have nothing about them to suggest DiMaggio, nor does John Wernke's All-American appearance create anything like the impression made by Lou Gehrig's luggish mug.

Maybe rabid Yankee fans, like my cousin Ronnie and his son, Adam, or my friend Jerry from the Upper West Side and my friend Jerry from Howard Beach, would find something to like in this unsatisfactory effort at pin-stripe glorification. The material is rife with explosive possibilities, but—and I say this not because I happen to be a Mets fan—the payload carried by BRONX BOMBERS--like the way the Yankees ended the season this year--goes off more with a whimper than a bang.  

119. Review of THE WINSLOW BOY (October 16, 2013)

119. THE WINSLOW BOY

 

 

Ever since Greek tragedy gave us Aeschylus’ EUMENIDES, courtroom dramas have provided theatergoers with suspenseful, thought-provoking plays. Classics like THE MERCHANT OF VENICE and modern plays like WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, INHERIT THE WIND, THE CAINE MUTINY COURT MARTIAL, and A FEW GOOD MEN hold audiences in thrall with their combination of battling lawyers and baffling crimes. Next week Broadway will offer the first dramatization of a John Grisham novel, A TIME TO KILL, which hopefully will add another to the list.  

 

  

I mention these because the Roundabout Theatre’s revival of Terence Rattigan’s 1946 THE WINSLOW BOY has opened at the American Airlines Theatre. This British play, which first appeared on Broadway in 1947, starring Frank Allenby as Sir Robert Morton and Alan Webb as Arthur Winslow, has all the makings of a rousing courtroom drama, except it never steps foot in a courtroom. Instead, it remains all the while in the home of Ronnie Winslow, the 13-year-old boy who is kicked out of the Royal Naval College in 1912 for allegedly stealing a 5-pound postal order, and who, in 1914, eventually goes to court against the British Crown in a David and Goliath case to clear his name. The internationally-watched incident was of great importance in symbolizing the rights of the average man. (The play is based on a true story about a boy named George Archer-Shee, who died at Ypres in World War I.)

 

            THE WINSLOW BOY, which has been made into two films--the last one, directed by David Mamet, produced in 1999--tells of how the boy’s expulsion inspires his defiant father, Arthur Winslow (Roger Rees), to take on the British government in his fight to prove his son’s innocence, even when, over the course of two years of legal fighting, it causes his family irreparable financial, physical, and emotional damage. Unfortunately, all the arguments in the House of Commons to allow the case to go forward (the government considers the Naval College, as a representative of the Admiralty, to be infallible), culminating in the king’s signing a “petition of right,” with the words, “Let right be done,” and all the actual trial activity is reported in the Winslows’ living room, secondhand; the only scene approximating the excitement of a trial is when Sir Robert Morton (Allesandro Nivola), the brilliant, high-powered attorney and opposition member of the House of Commons, asked by family solicitor Desmond Curry (Michael Cumpsty) to consider taking the case, cross-examines Ronnie (Spencer David Milford) to determine for himself the boy’s guilt or innocence. When the actual trial concludes, most members of the family are not even present at it (Ronnie is at the movies), and the news is delivered by Violet (Henny Russell), the maid, like a Greek messenger, albeit a comic one.
 

 

            This is THE WINSLOW BOY’s first Broadway revival, although it was given a previous Roundabout production in 1980, starring Remak Ramsey as Sir Robert, when the company was still ensconced in a small Off-Broadway basement theatre; it was a fine production I still remember. The current production, given the kind of physically impressive  and professionally polished Broadway presentation that the Roundabout could not provide in 1980, starts off well, with a cast including Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Grace Winslow, Ronnie’s loving mother, who eventually begins to doubt the wisdom of keeping the case alive; Zachary Booth as Dickie Winslow, Ronnie’s fun-loving older brother, a student at Oxford; Charlotte Parry as Catherine Winslow, Ronnie’s 30-year-old, leftwing, suffragette sister; and Chandler Williams as John Watherstone, Catherine’s straitlaced fiancé, who initially supports the family’s case but proves to be spineless when his conservative father threatens to cut him off if the Winslow case proceeds. All have convincing accents (Ms. Parry, and Messrs. Cumpsty and Rees are British) and suitably convey the style and atmosphere of Edwardian England.

 

 

             The action transpires in the expansive, green wall-papered drawing room of a house in Kensington, provided by Peter McKintosh with all the period appurtenances; there is a curtained window area at stage right, and a large set of white folding doors upstage center leading to a dining area. Mr. McKintosh also is responsible for the attractive, minutely researched costumes, and David Lander’s lighting capably captures the changing weather and times of day.

 

            The production is in the hands of British director Lindsay Posner, whose London staging at the Old Vic so impressed Roundabout producer Todd Haimes that he brought Mr. Posner here to restage it with a New York cast. The energetic direction gives the play the aura of a high comedy in the Shavian mold, but eventually the serious stuff must intrude on the good spirits, although the comic tone is never far behind. Melodrama is present, too, when Mr. Nivola does his cross-examination of Ronnie. Suddenly, Mr. Nivola, dressed in a barrister’s formal black clothing, becomes Perry Mason on steroids, circling in for the kill, with dramatically swooping vocal intonations and grandstanding gestures that suggest we’re somewhere back in the days of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson.
 

            Mr. Rattigan mingles historical accuracy with dramatic license, but does his best to  consider issues of justice and right; still, he never forgets that he’s writing for a West End (or Broadway) audience and is unable to abandon his romantic subplot. While he emphasizes the toll that the lawsuit takes on the Winslows, all of whom make great sacrifices on its behalf, there is too much conventional concern with Catherine’s love life and her liberal positions on women’s rights; this material is of historical interest but slows the play down. Sir Robert, a Conservative, is opposed to Catherine's ideology, but, since he is also a handsome bachelor, it is, of course, impossible for the dramatist to ignore the gleam of a potential romance between him and this woman he now finds remarkably articulate and capable of a law career of her own. So we have long scenes picturing Catherine and John’s love affair, John’s feckless abandonment of Catherine, Catherine’s being proposed to by Desmond, and Sir Robert’s expression of interest, most of the latter coming after the lawsuit is settled and therefore being truly anticlimactic. Since the play runs over two and a half hours, the dramaturgy begins to seem tiresomely longwinded.

            There is also a dramaturgic elephant in the room during a long second-act scene when all sorts of discussions and arguments are going on while poor Ronnie falls asleep on the couch, placed at dead center. He may be 15 but he’s talked about as if he’s an infant, with his mother carrying on about putting him to bed in his room. Meanwhile, despite all the hullabaloo around him, he sleeps like a baby, defying plausibility and forcing me to keep pressing my suspension of disbelief button. Perhaps if there had been a separate couch for him to sleep on in an upstage corner, or if the actors had been directed to speak as if they cared about his sleeping presence the playwright's choice might not be so distracting.

            The acting is generally fine, if sometimes too broad, but I most appreciated Michael Cumpsty’s friendly, shy, and gently comical Desmond, with his self-deprecating honesty and amusing facial expressions. Ms. Mastrantonio is splendid as Ronnie’s warm and lively mother, and Mr. Rees conveys excellently Arthur’s pride, resilience, and stiff upper-lip Englishness, as well as the pain of his physical ailments; he does, however, tend to mug just a wee bit too much. Mr. Nivola is too actorish to be convincing, but Ms. Parry brings sincerity and intelligence to Catherine, without descending into smugness. As Ronnie, Spencer Milford Davis is suitably juvenile and angelic, although in that namby-pamby way so typical of British boys in movies from the 1930s through the 1950s.

               THE WINSLOW BOY is solid, if conventional, Broadway fare in its middlebrow combination of high-minded liberalism, drawing-room comedy, romantic relationships, and suspenseful legal drama. It is handsomely presented and, for the most part, engagingly performed. Its contrivances are apparent and its reliance on a messenger to describe the courtroom theatrics at its heart may be artistic drawbacks, but Rattigan was a talented playwright who knew how to hold an audience with a well-made mix of comedy and drama. My theatre companion thought it was the best thing she’d seen with me, which either speaks very poorly of the other plays she's attended or speaks very highly of this one.

118. Review of ROMEO AND JULIET (October 13, 2013)

118. ROMEO & JULIET (OPENS 10/16)

 

The ROMEO AND JULIET battle for the hearts and minds of New York theatergoers continues with the new revival playing at the Classic Stage Company (CSC) on E. 13th Street. The Broadway revival, starring Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad, is up against this Off Broadway staging (which uses the ampersand in its title), directed by Tea Alagić and starring Elizabeth Olsen and Julian Cihi. (We'll leave discussion of the just opened film version, starring Hallie Steinfeld and Douglas Booth, to other commentators.)

 

 

 Elizabeth Olsen and Julian Cihi. Photo: Joan Marcus.

 

 

          The Bloom-Rashad version, which received mixed reviews, nevertheless edges out the newcomer, even though the CSC leads are much closer in age to the characters they play. Ms. Olsen, best known for her film work, looks more like a conventional Juliet than the much taller Ms. Rashad, but Ms. Rashad is more comfortable with the verse, which often gets muffled in Ms. Olsen’s naturalistic approach. She’s sweet, lovely, and talented; perhaps, in a better directed production, she might have made a stronger impression; here she's just passable. Mr. Cihi, a young man with a slender dancer’s body and with his hair pulled back in a pony tail, replaced Finn Wittrock as Romeo when the more experienced actor had a conflict with a film assignment. Mr. Cihi, to be honest, simply lacks the star charisma of Mr. Bloom; his experience is rather limited and it shows. This practically unknown actor, just recently a student at NYU, has been thrown into a difficult situation; it’s impossible to avoid making comparisons when two productions of the same classic are running simultaneously. On the one hand, Mr. Cihi has the advantage of the underdog going up against a much more mature actor best known for his movie acting and just as inexperienced at Shakespeare. But Mr. Bloom’s performance is far more vigorous, romantic, and vocally expressive, and Mr. Cihi, despite being far closer to Romeo in age, is not yet ready for prime time.

Once again, as in the Broadway production, ROMEO & JULIET is being given a modern dress version; the bigger budget of that version allows for more expensive costuming and sets, and even the use of a motorcycle for Romeo to make his entrance on, but the essential thrust of both productions is the same. The young men are made to look and behave like contemporary gang members, Sampson (Stan Demidoff), for example, wearing skintight jeans and shirtless to display his multiply tattooed, sculpted torso. Let’s face it, the gang warfare gambit has run its course. Now hear this: WEST SIDE STORY was influenced by ROMEO AND JULIET, not the other way around!

Whereas the Capulet side is black on Broadway, it leans toward the Hispanic on Off Broadway. There are a number of lines delivered in Spanish, not only by the tough guys, but by the Nurse (Daphne Rubin-Vega), who is depicted as a pint-sized hot tamale—a sort of miniature Sofia Vergara—in fashionable slacks, platform shoes, white blouse, and large cross hanging from her neck, with her hair piled on top of her head in two side by cylinders that made me think of Lily Tomlin’s character of Ernestine the telephone operator. More Spanish expressions spill from the mouth of Lady Capulet (Kathryn Meisle), a bleached blonde cougar in a tight, hot pink pants suit with a leopard-print blouse. Ben Brantley in the New York Times thinks this Lady Capulet is having a fling with Tybalt (Dion Mucciacito); I didn't notice it but in this mishmash of a production it's as likely as not to be there.

 

Daphne Rubin-Vega and Elizabeth Olsen. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Too many of Clint Ramos’s costumes, though, are simply dull, none probably more so than Juliet’s. She first appears in white shift, then she’s seen in a demure, white ball dress, then in a white slip, and finally in a white wedding gown that looks like she’s gotten dressed up as a princess for Halloween. When Juliet has her big confrontation with her father about marrying Paris, she stands there barefoot and in her slip; her visit to Friar Laurence (Daniel Davis) right after is also barefoot, and she simply puts an brown raincoat, fully open at the front, over her slip. Mercutio (T.R. Knight) is simply slovenly.

Marsha Ginsberg has provided barely any conventional scenery, everything being played in the three-quarters round on an empty stage whose floor is covered by gym-like wooden flooring. Against the blank rear wall, whose only virtue is to allow for Jason Lyons’s lighting to color it, are nine wood and plastic office chairs, and a long, sleek white table, upstage right used only when Romeo and Juliet, as played here, are presumably in bed together (the “Hark the lark” scene). No attempt at all is made to introduce a balcony for the balcony scene, which is simply meant to be understood as being there. This minimalist approach works well for noh theatre, but contemporary Shakespeare, unless the acting is so brilliant as to require no other distractions (there was barely any scenery at the Globe), usually benefits from visual beauty. The most physically memorable moments come during the ballroom scene, with a lamé silver curtain swished across the upstage area and the dancers—moving to some odd electronic music by Ryan Rumery—dressed in masks and costumes that would have done better at New York Comic Con. Notable among them is the huge head of Winnie-the-Pooh Romeo wears, and that--in another directorial misstep--he's wearing when Juliet falls in love with him.

It’s ironic that the kind of lavishly designed, poetically inclined, Renaissance-inspired ROMEO AND JULIET revivals of yesteryear, now considered mere fustian, have been replaced by too-clever-for-their-own-sake revivals that are semi-clones of one another. We don’t have to return to the days of Katherine Cornell-type revivals, but, please, can we have something beautiful to look at again?

The scripts for both the Broadway and Off-Broadway stagings have been cut considerably, but while the former seems to have gotten something of a trim, the latter appears to have received a scalping, or at least one of those new jobbies where you get one side of your head clipped to the scalp while leaving the other side hanging free. There is no Lady Montague, for example (thank you to my granddaughter, Briar, for spotting that), and my old role of Balthasar (“Enter Balthasar, booted” goes--or went--the stage direction) has been sadly booted to oblivion. The final half hour simply throws Shakespeare to the wind and rushes along, tossing out lines like ballast, and reducing the tomb scene (if you love Paris in the fall, close your eyes cause he ain’t there) to little more than Friar Laurence’s recap of how horribly he’s fucked up everything.

Things don’t go very well for the fight scenes either; since no fight specialist is credited, we can assume that Ms. Alagić takes responsibility for these. The first one, among the Capulet “gang” and the Montagues, uses no weapons, and the command for the brawlers to “put up your swords” must mean “put down your dukes.” When we get to the Tybalt-Mercutio confrontation, Tybalt sheds his satin shirt to flex his muscles and dance around like John L. Sullivan. But Mercutio, abandoning any sympathy Shakespeare may have wished him to garner (T.R. Knight’s awful performance of him as a grungy, raspy whiner would have done that anyway), simply attacks and bloodies his antagonist by striking him with what seem like packets of ketchup that burst on impact. No knife is visible in his hand, so I imagine he’s supposed to be using a razor or piece of glass. When Mercutio himself gets his comeuppance, it’s also from an invisible object. Perhaps Tybalt’s manicurist gave him a sharpened pinky nail; he’s Tybalt the cat, after all, and hasn’t been declawed. For a production that traffics in nonexistent balconies and other props, there’s a hell of a lot of blood to clean up at the end of the first act.

Not all the acting is less than notable or hampered by misdirection; veteran Daniel Davis (who replaced another stellar artist, William Hurt, during rehearsals) brings his rich voice, precise articulation, emotional strength, and insightful readings to Friar Laurence, being far more effective in the role than Brent Carver is on Broadway, and David Garrison offers a strong, clearly outlined Capulet, if not quite as volatile a one as Chris Cooper’s. As is standard for Shakespeare productions, every opportunity to offer a sexual body movement to telegraph the dialogue’s bawdy meaning (actual or imagined) is leaped on like a naughty new discovery. Few actors are capable of speaking Shakespeare as if he actually wrote beautiful verse because they are so preoccupied with trying to sound natural. It would be enough if only the speeches between Romeo and Juliet could respect the verse, combining honesty with lyricism.

There’ll be a lot more Shakespeare stepping up to the plate soon. So far the score is 0-2, but we’re still in the early innings. On deck or in the dugout (the batting order is still in flux): Mark Rylance, heading the Shakespeare’s Globe productions of TWELFE NIGHT OR WHAT YOU WILL and KING RICHARD THE THIRD; Julie Taymor’s MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM; and Ethan Hawke as MACBETH. Let’s hope they at least even the score!

117. Review of THE SEAGULL (October 13, 2013)

117. THE SEAGULL

 

In 1981 Max Stafford-Clark, then artistic director of London’s prestigious Royal Court Theatre, commissioned Irish playwright Thomas Kilroy to adapt Chekhov’s THE SEAGULL, written in 1895 and produced a year later, by shifting its native Russian setting to West Ireland in the 1880s. The production proved a success and now, 32 years later, Mr. Stafford-Clark has returned to the play, staging it with a mixed British, Irish, and American cast at the Culture Project’s Lynn Redgrave Theatre on Bleecker Street.  Mr. Kilroy found many social and political parallels that justified the geographic transformation from a Slavic to an Anglo-Irish provincial environment, and also took into account the particular accents the new version would employ to suggest the class and educational differences among the characters. The attitudes of the provincial Irish toward England and the opposite also had parallels between provincial Russians and Moscow. This can be seen, for example, in the relationship between Constantine (Slate Holmgren), the aspiring Irish playwright, and his mother, Isobel Desmond (Trudie Styler)—Chekhov’s Mme. Irina Nicolayevna Arkadina—the sophisticated London theatre star who condescends to visit her aging, ailing brother Peter’s estate and engages in a volatile love-hate relationship with her son.    

 

 

 

 

From left: Trudie Styler, Rufus Collins, Kenneth Ryan, Amanda Quaid, Stella Feehily, Ryan David O'Byrne (standing), Tim Ruddy, Alan Cox.

Only the names Constantine [Gavrilovich Trepleff], Peter [Nicolayevitch Sorin] (Kenneth Ryan), and Pauline [Andreyevna] (Stella Feehily), by the way, remain from Chekhov, although without the additional names shown here in brackets; Mr. Stafford-Clark, whom I met at the theatre, said this is because they are the only ones common in both Russia and Ireland. Thus we have Lily (Rachel Spencer Hewitt) for Nina Mikhailovna Zaryetchny, Cousin Gregory (Tim Ruddy) for Ilya Afanasyevitch Shamreyeff, Mary (Amanda Quaid) for Masha Marya Ilyinishna, Mr. Aston (Alan Cox) for Boris Alexeyevitch Trigorin, Dr. Hickey (Rufus Collins) for Dr. Eugene Sergeyetich Dorn, and James (Ryan David O’Byrne) for Semyon Semyonovitch Medvedenko.

Mr. Kilroy, as has become common in such adaptations, didn’t translate the play himself but worked from a literal version that he skillfully transposed into a believable variety of Anglo-British verbal patterns that, I assume, are much easier for English-speaking actors to feel comfortable with than the sometimes stiff-sounding translations that attempt to capture the essence of Russian-speaking characters. Everything sounded quite natural, and—despite the playwright’s lengthy program note rationale—I appreciated the territorial shift more because of this linguistic transposition than for any of the presumed new insights afforded into late 19th-century social and political issues, such as the deleterious effect the Land Acts are having on the landed gentry. The name Parnell flies by, but I doubt many Americans will pick up on it, or even on the references to Isobel’s great West End rivals, Madge Kennedy and Ellen Terry. Then again, those familiar with translations of the play may be disturbed by alterations such as that given the play’s opening lines. In Stark Young’s version, they go: “Medvedenko (Semyon): Why do you always wear black?” Masha: I am in mourning for my life. I’m unhappy.” Kilroy changes this to: “James: And why is it you're always wearing black?” Mary: “It's because I'm so sad. Black is for sadness.”

The Irish atmosphere offers the opportunity for Constantine’s pretentiously symbolist play to be inspired by Celtic myth in what is clearly a reference to the poetic plays of Yeats. It's staged in an aisle, forcing some audience members, including me, to crane their necks to see it. Lily appears there resembling a pre-Raphaelite Ellen Terry in Sargent’s painting of her as Lady Macbeth. Irish songs, beautifully sung acapella by Stella Feehily, cover the scene changes. Jocular Irish humor bubbles up throughout to maintain the proper spirit.

This is a low-budget production, so Peter Hartwell’s design uses a single set of blue walls and white pillars for each scene, with the furniture rearranged to suit the dramatic needs. For the opening scene, a green hedge tells us that we are outdoors. It is not the most appealing way to produce THE SEAGULL, but it is efficient enough to establish a basic environment that allows us to concentrate on the play and its performance. Ilona Somogyi’s costumes nicely convey the period and style.

For me, the foremost performance is that of British actor Alan Cox, so brilliant earlier in the season in the title role of Priestley’s CORNELIUS, and here a surprisingly amusing and likably charming Trigorin (whoops, Aston). He brings out all the self-deprecating insecurities of this outwardly successful English middlebrow writer, the way he constantly belittles and questions his own fame, when faced by the awestruck idealization he elicits from the innocent young Lily/Nina of Rachel Spencer Hewitt. When we realize later his eventual cruelty toward Nina, the seagull he destroys, his apparent niceness takes on a hue of unexpected evil. Ms. Hewitt, an American actress with a warm, radiant beauty, brings a rich voice and deep intelligence to the role, but she seems too sophisticated in her early scenes to be so easy a victim of Aston’s charms; her later scenes, after she’s suffered rejection as an actress and the loss of a child, are better but still not thoroughly convincing. Mr. Holmgren’s Constantine is far too overwrought and unpleasant. Bald and bearded, he’s not your conventional Constantine, and with his constant whining and temper tantrums, fails to evoke much sympathy. Mr. Stafford-Clark stresses Constantine’s Oedipal relationship to Isobel, including a scene when he vainly attempts to kiss her on the lips. (Their bond closely approximates that of Hamlet and Gertrude.) British veteran Trudie Styler (best known, perhaps, as the wife of Sting) gives the diva Isobel/Arkadina a satisfying aura of self-involvement and theatrical grand manners, but has difficulty engaging with her subtextual vulnerability. The other company members are mostly vibrant and colorful (especially Tim Ruddy as Cousin Gregory, with his boorish stories of famous actors he’s seen), and offer helpful support.

This SEAGULL avoids the gloominess often associated with Chekhov and seeks to hit the play’s comic buttons (Chekhov insisted that the play was a comedy), but this sometimes leads to excessive shouting among a group of temperamental hotheads, especially in the early scenes. There are a number of choices that seem odd, including having the dead seagull shot by Constantine hidden in a burlap bag. But, imperfect as it is, I found the production more spirited and enjoyable than the star-powered Broadway revival of 2008 starring Kristin Scott Thomas as Arkadina, Carey Mulligan as Nina, and Peter Sarsgaard as Constantine. Chekhov in Ireland may seem odd, but the fellow turns out have been a broth of a boy.