160. Review: DEAD DOG PARK (seen March 4, 2016)

“Lives Matter”

Stars range from 5-1.

Although not without a few sluggish spots, Barry Malawer’s DEAD DOG PARK is mainly a tight, well-executed, 80-minute drama of the “ripped from the headlines” variety. The play’s subject of police brutality toward black victims couldn’t be timelier even though its issues of guilt and responsibility are deliberately left ambiguous.

Tom O'Keefe, Migs Govea. Photo: Ashley Garrett.

The play opens in the immediate aftermath of a troublesome incident: a white NYPD officer, Rob McDonald (Tom O’Keefe), was chasing a 13-year-old black boy, Tyler Chapin, for throwing rocks at him and his partner, Ricky Romero (Migs Govea) in the eponymous Washington Heights park (which actually exists). The chase ended in an abandoned building when the boy fell out of a fourth-floor window.  

Much, but far from all, of what follows is about whether Tyler—in critical condition and unable to remember what happened—fell accidentally or was pushed. The volatile McDonald insists on his innocence to Officer Romero (Migs Govea), who's terribly conflicted about what to believe and how much to support his good friend. 

Tom O'Keefe, Susannah Millonzi. Photo: Ashley Garrett.

John Jones (Ryan Quinn) is an activist African-American attorney, hired by Tyler’s angry, single mother, Sharonne (Eboni Flowers), to represent her in court; she stands to gain millions if Jones succeeds, but insists she’s not in it for the money. Sharonne, convinced the cop pushed Tyler, simply wants justice, but learns her own mothering may be called into question. And she’s fully aware that her son is a troublemaker, further muddying the waters. The case also wraps a stranglehold around McDonald’s marriage to Angela (Susannah Millonzi), who has her own doubts about his innocence.

Eboni Flowers. Photo: Ashley Garrett.

We become immersed in the murkiness of the tragic events and each character’s response, before, during, and after the trial.  Reasons to sympathize with or suspect both sides are given. Even McDonald himself doesn’t know if he’s guilty or not. The audience is forced to make up its own mind. Regardless of how the jury in the play decides, we wonder if justice is possible under such circumstances. And, despite our awareness of the many black lives brought short by brutal white police, does what happened to Tyler Chapin—at least as far as the play explains it—inspire kneejerk reactions of one sort or the other?

Ryan Quinn. Photo: Ashley Garrett.

Director Eric Tucker, responsible for downtown’s wonderful SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, handles the multiple scenes and locales in his cleverly minimalist way. The spare setting, by John McDermott, suggests an interrogation room, with only a table and several chairs. Overhead hangs a shabby skylight. Except in the epilogue-like final scene, designer Joyce Liao employs unvarying white light. All the characters remain on stage throughout, sitting or standing still in various attitudes while others are in action, and joining in the dialogue (even when speaking someone else’s lines) as needed. Props are minimal and everyone wears the same things (designed by Whitney Locher) throughout, regardless of what the script says about their clothing. Mr. Tucker orchestrates everything with notable fluidity; even without localizing scenery we know enough about where we are not to require it. His chief fault is in not having prevented the otherwise talented Ms. Millonzi from mumbling; although she has a good, tense scene with Ms. Flowers, her scenes with Mr. O’Keefe are the production’s dullest.

Tom O'Keefe, Jude Tibeau. Photo: Ashley Garrett.

Mr. O’Keefe captures McDonald’s fear and sensitivity as well as his propensity for rage, while Mr. Govea gives a thoroughly natural performance of a man unsure of his position. Mr. Quinn brings sharp intelligence to Jones, the dynamic attorney, while Ms. Flowers, as Sharonne, gives a fierce performance as the feisty mother determined to gain justice, as she sees it. Tyler himself makes a startling appearance (I won’t say how), his presence edging the play to a different level; thanks to the distinctive performance of Jude Tibeau, the play ends potently, offering the audience a lot to think about when they depart.

Please note that I saw this play late in its run and that it closes on Sunday.

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DEAD DOG PARK

59E59 Theaters

59 East Fifty-ninth Street, NYC

Through March 6

159. Review: BURIED CHILD (seen March 2, 2016)

"Remains of the Day"

Stars range from 5-1.

Few plays remain as branded on my brain as the 1979 production at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (to which it moved after opening at Theatre for a New City) of Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer-winning BURIED CHILD. (I missed Steppenwolf’s acclaimed 1996 Broadway revival.) In BURIED CHILD, as in the other plays in Shepard’s “family trilogy” (THE CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS and TRUE WEST), we saw how families can be cursed, sources not of comfort but of pain and death handed down from one generation to the next. BURIED CHILD’s naturalistic-symbolic picture of an American family in dissolution was both accessible and puzzling; critics ever since have been analyzing it for its meanings. However, if I magically live another 36 years and even more magically keep all my marbles, I doubt I’ll remember much about the uninspired revival now being given by the New Group under Scott Elliott’s direction at the Pershing Square Signature Theatre Center, even though the gifted Ed Harris and Amy Madigan head the cast. 

Paul Sparks, Ed Harris. Photo: Monique Carboni.

When the audience enters, Dodge (Mr. Harris) is already on stage, sitting on a crummy old couch in the rundown living room of his Midwestern farmhouse (designed by Derek McLane), a baseball cap over the awful haircut one of his demented sons, Bradley, gave him while he slept (another one awaits); now and then he coughs as he stares, not even watching the small TV perched before him. Outside, the rain is coming down. When the house dims and the stage brightens, this smoking, boozing wreck and his piously religious, henpecking wife, Halie (Amy Madigan, too one-note), bicker at length, except she remains offstage. Finally, she appears, dressed neatly in black for an appointment with her minister/lover, Father Dewis (Larry Pine, making the most of his secondary part).  

Paul Sparks, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan. Photo: Monique Carboni.

We next meet Dodge’s mentally damaged son, Tilden (Paul Sparks, more dull than creepy), who moved back when something happened that forced him to flee New Mexico, where he lived for 20 years; muddy, and with his arms full of corn, he proceeds to shuck the produce, claiming that the backyard's abundant with the stuff; Dodge and Halie, however, insist nothing’s been planted there since 1935. The symbols are on the march, the meaning of the fecund backyard being one of the biggies. The yard is related to the play’s throbbing secret, suggested in its title; while we’re told how that buried child died, its paternity and the reason it was killed remain purposely vague. Meanwhile, Tilden’s similarly off-balance brother, the broodingly threatening Bradley (Rich Sommer, striving to be weird), clumps about on a wooden leg, the result of an accident in which he severed his limb with a chainsaw. A third son, the promising Ansel, died but what we learn of him is disputed by those he left behind.

Rich Sommer, Taissa Farmiga, Paul Sparks. Photo: Monique Carboni.

Vince (Nat Wolff, shallow), Dodge’s seemingly normal musician grandson, and his girlfriend, Shelly (Taissa Farmiga, shrill), arrive, having stopped off on their way to visit Tilden in New Mexico. But—another mystery—neither Tilden nor Dodge recognize him, even though he’s been away only six years. (Some have suggested he represents what the buried child might have become if it had lived.) Shelly, who initially wants to leave, remains, slicing and dicing backyard carrots, almost like a new family member, while Vince goes off on a liquor run for his grandfather. 

When he eventually returns, his drunken, bottle-throwing violence seems to come from nowhere, adding another layer to the play’s many bafflements, just as does the fact that everyone now recognizes him. A rush of incidents follows, with Father Dewis, who’s returned with Halie, finding himself completely adrift amidst the family’s dysfunction. After the revelation that other vegetables have joined the corn in the backyard, the family guilty secret enters cradled in Tilden’s arms; as Haley's offstage voice says, “Maybe it’s the sun,” he slowly climbs the steps, bringing it to her.

Amy Madigan, Nat Wolff, Taissa Farmiga, Ed Harris. Photo: Monique Carboni.

This is a play in which a very special atmosphere must prevail but, apart from Mr. Harris’s vivid performance as the seedy, alcoholic, cough-addled patriarch, Dodge, the production fails to resonate with anything like the effect it had all those years ago. Straightforward naturalism dominates, very little in Mr. Elliott’s staging, or even Peter Kaczorowski’s lighting, suggesting Shepard’s surrealistic underbelly. Although written in three acts, the play is performed for an intermissionless hour and 50 minutes, which only increases the feeling of drudgery. And, despite scattered laughs, the play’s rich vein of humor is barely evident.

Taissa Farmiga, Ed Harris, Rich Sommer, Amy Madigan, Larry Pine. Photo: Monique Carboni.

Like the skeletal child Tilden carries on at the play’s conclusion, this production reveals how important the flesh and blood of a quality production are necessary to cover BURIED CHILD’s remains.

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BURIED CHILD

Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre/Pershing Square Signature Center Theatre

480 West Forty-Second Street, NYC

Through April 3

158. Review: FAMILIAR (seen February 28, 2016)

"Zimbabwe in Minnesota"

Stars range from 5-1.

The striking face with the blazing but welcoming eyes on the cover of the February issue of American Theatre magazine belongs to the excitingly talented actress/playwright Danai Gurira. She not only plays a zombie killer on TV’s successful “The Walking Dead” but is the author of the acclaimed ECLIPSED, scheduled to open on Broadway three days after the play covered here, FAMILIAR, opens Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons.

Harold Surratt, Joby Earle. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Born to American academics in Grinnell, Iowa, and raised from age five in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, before returning to the U.S. to study acting at NYU, Ms. Gurira usually concentrates on African issues in plays set on that continent (ECLIPSED takes place in Liberia), but she takes something of a detour from those concerns in FAMILIAR, which premiered a year ago at the Yale Rep with—except for one actor—a different cast. Not that the two-act play isn’t about African issues but, instead of being expressed within an African context, they’re embedded in an often hilarious—and I mean hilarious—domestic drama set in a Minneapolis suburb.

Roslyn Ruff, Joby Earle. Photo: Joan Marcus.

FAMILIAR follows the familiar—perhaps a bit too familiar—well-made play trajectory in which a disparate group of family members gather for the imminent wedding of a daughter. Laughter, tears, anger, and misunderstandings are the components of its dramaturgy. So are the ultimate revelations of long-kept secrets that threaten to turn happiness into sorrow before happiness returns. These latter, in fact, shove the play too sharply in the direction of melodrama, and, while appealing in the way hidden facts about characters we care about always are, nonetheless smack too strongly of dramatic contrivance.

Harold Surratt, Ito Aghayere, Roslyn Ruff, Tamara Tunie. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Also familiar is the thematic issue of assimilation presented by immigrants and their children trying to balance the desire to Americanize with the pull of their native culture. But Ms. Gurira deploys these elements with such masterful skill that—assisted by an exceptionally adept cast and spot-on direction by Rebecca Taichman—her play springs to life in such an entertaining way you might—at least momentarily—even conceive of it competing on Broadway with ECLIPSED.

Harold Surratt, Tamara Tunie, Roslyn Ruff. Photo: Joan Marcus.

The family in question is a highly educated Zimbabwean-American one; it’s a joy to see such an unfamiliar family on a mainstream stage and to learn of what concerns them on an everyday level. They live in a lovely, book-lined home, both levels of which are beautifully rendered by designer Clint Ramos. It’s the kind of suburban home into which you instantly feel like moving. The patriarch is Donald, called Baba Tendi (Harold Surratt), a lawyer. His every attempt to hang a map of Zimbabwe (a picture of Robert Mugabe in the Yale staging) in place of a decorative painting is countered by the painting being put back again by his wife, Marvelous, called Mai Tendi (Tamara Tunie). Their friction over the map symbolizes the play’s central conflict.

Ito Aghayere, Melanie Nicholls-King. Photo: Joan Marcus.

The mid-30s bride is Tendi (Roslyn Ruff), a lawyer, and her groom is Chris (Joby Earle), a white guy with a background in human rights work in Africa. They’re pious Christians and she’s saved her virginity for her wedding night. Her younger sister is Nyasha (Ito Aghayere), a New York-based feng sui consultant and would-be singer just back from a stay in Zimbabwe and preoccupied with reconnecting to her cultural roots.

Myra Lucretia Taylor, Roslyn Ruff. Photo: Joan Marcus.

The other relatives are Marvelous’s younger sister, a geology professor and prospective direct sales entrepreneur named Auntie Margaret or Mai Tongi (Melanie Nicholls-King), and her older sister, Aunt Anne or Mai Carol (Myra Lucretia Taylor), whose domineering presence ignites the principal action. This happens when, at Tendi’s request but to Marvelous’s assimilationist horror, she insists on performing the Zimbabwean bride price ceremony of roora.

Myra Lucretia Taylor, Melanie Nicholls-King. Photo: Joan Marcus.

There’s one more character, brought in to serve in the ceremony: Chris’s brother, Brad (Joe Tippet), wearing a Ramones t-shirt and a gray wool cap, whose sweet cluelessness in a world he’s totally unfamiliar with leads to some of the play’s biggest laughs. Perhaps the biggest is when he and Nyasha meet cute; that moment, and the circumstances leading up to it, may strain credulity but it’s a great way to bring down the act one curtain. Mr. Tippet’s pitch-perfect, offhandedly natural performance makes it easy to see why he’s a holdover from the Yale production.

Melanie Nicholls-King, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Tamara Tunie, Roslyn Ruff. Photo: Joan Marcus.

The ensemble is, on the whole, excellent, but special kudos go to Ms. Taylor as the indomitable Auntie Anne, whose magisterial presence, once she dons her traditional Zimbabwean garb, would cow even Donald Trump. Ms. Tunie’s Marvelous is impressively commanding but her accent is also the least convincing. Ms. Nicholls-King’s Margaret is colorfully vibrant, Ms. Aghayere’s Nyasha is convincingly determined and vulnerable, Mr. Surratt’s Donald manages to hold back his feelings until his ultimate emotional release, Ms. Ruff’s Tendi is charismatic and truthful, and Mr. Earle’s Chris is appropriately accommodating amidst events he can’t control.

Spirited direction, a fine set, excellent costumes by Susan Hilferty, adept lighting by Tyler Micoleau, and a fine sound design by Darron L West conspire with quality performances to make FAMILIAR, even with its obvious frailties, something with which many definitely will want to become familiar.

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FAMILIAR

Playwrights Horizons

416 West Forty-Second Street, NYC

Through March 27

157. Review: AN EVENING OF JAPANESE TRADITIONAL THEATRE (seen March 1, 2016)

"The Prince of Kabuki"

Prologue

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On Monday and Tuesday, February 29 and March 1, New York lovers of Japanese traditional theatre were graced by the presence of Japanese theatre royalty, the kabuki actor Ichikawa Ebizō XII.  In kabuki, as in certain other Japanese traditional arts, names are handed down through the generations to artists belonging to important lineages, and the same artist may hold several different names during his career as his artistry advances. Several kabuki lineages can be traced back to the 17th century, and such is the case with Ebizō, whose line began with Ichikawa Danjūrō I (1660-1704), and whose father was Ichikawa Danjūrō XII (1946-2013). Ebizō is the name almost all members of the line held before taking the name Danjūrō.

This line dominated Edo (Tokyo) kabuki and produced a remarkable succession of superstars, although several Danjūrōs were adopted, breaking the bloodline. After the great Danjūrō IX died in 1903 the line came to an end for half a century. The line continued through the efforts of Danjūrō IX’s son-in-law, a businessman who determined to become an actor after marrying Danjūrō’s daughter; he took the name Ichikawa Sanshō V (1882-1956). Although never appreciated as an actor, his efforts to sustain the family heritage led to his being awarded the name Danjūrō X posthumously the year he died.

While Sanshō himself never became Ebizō, his adopted son, previously known as Ichikawa Komazō IX, did. His adoption in 1940, when he was 31, was marked by his taking the name Ebizō IX, a sign he would one day become Danjūrō himself. As his career boomed in the postwar years, he resisted becoming Danjūrō while his adopted father—who was himself considered a potential successor to the name—was still alive. Even after Sanshō V died and received the name, Ebizō IX, aware of all the obligations that taking the name would entail, held off doing so until 1962. So powerful was the name, which had become almost mythical during its long absence, that the name taking—marked by elaborate ceremonies—was one of the most celebrated moments in modern kabuki history. Tragically, Danjūrō XI died in 1965, when he was only 56. (The entire story is recounted in detail in my book Kabuki at the Crossroads: Years of Crisis, 1952-1965.)

Danjūrō XI’s son, Ebizō XI, became Danjūrō XII in 1985; his accession was marked not only in Japan but in New York during a kabuki program at the Metropolitan Opera House, a first. Ebizō XII is his son, and will surely one day become Danjūrō XIII. As with all sons of kabuki stars he is called an onzōshi, meaning a prince, and it is his obligation to carry on the family name and bring increasing renown to it. Because of whose family he represents, Ebizō XI is the onzōshi of onzōshi, which is probably why his appearance at the Japan Society on February 29 in a discussion I moderated was billed as “The Prince of Kabuki: Ebizō Ichikawa” (a title using the Western order of personal name first).

The Performance

The major kabuki theatre in Japan, the Kabuki-za, has a section at the top of its highest balcony where you can pay to see a single part of the program, which may have three or four parts to it. It’s the kind of seating we call “nosebleed heaven” because of its height and distance from the stage, but it’s much more viewer friendly than the balcony at Carnegie Hall where my press seats placed me for “An Evening of Japanese Traditional Theatre,” produced by Grand Japan Theatre. On the one hand, I was lucky to be seated in the first row of this vertigo-inducing section, but the red plush bar running along the low barrier before me cut off so much of my view I was forced to watch much of the program while leaning forward. Still, it gave me a good vantage to survey the house which, despite very high ticket prices (some as much as $500), was packed. I later confirmed that the evening was a sellout.

Kamei Tadao (foreground). Photo: Masahito Ono.

Three pieces were on the program, one each from Japan’s kyōgen, nō, and kabuki genres. Kyōgen and nō share the same theatres and some of the same conventions, and are known in tandem as nōgaku. A minimum of scenic background was provided to serve for all three. Bringing a company of actors to America from Japan is a very expensive proposition; I counted 44 performers’ names in the program. So allowances have to be made for a traveling program giving only a single performance, even at so large a venue as Carnegie Hall. 

Shigeyama Ippei. Photo: Masahito Ono.

The pieces performed were a kyōgen version of SANBASŌ, an ancient, wordless, ceremonial dance; TSUCHIGUMO (The Earth Spider), a two-part nō play about a monstrous spider who attacks a medieval warrior; and SHUNKYŌ KAGAMIJISHI (The Mirror Lion), a kabuki dance play about a beautiful court maiden transformed into a raging lion.  SANBASŌ was energetically performed by Shigeyama Ippei, supported by a five-man musical team sitting upstage and playing a flute and three different kinds of drums. This isn’t what you might call a representative example of kyōgen, a form known for its comical sketches, but it serves here to provide a spirited introduction to the evening, with a definite air of auspiciousness. In fact, there are SANBASŌ variations in all forms of Japanese traditional theatre, especially kabuki, so its presence covers all bases.

Shigeyama Ippei. Photo: Masahito Ono.

Likewise, TSUCHIGUMO isn’t the best representative of nō. (There’s also a terrific kabuki version, by the way.) The medieval warrior Minamoto Raikō (Umewaka Kishō) has fallen ill. A priest (Katayama Kurōemon) appears to aid him but soon reveals he’s the spider spirit come to do the patient harm. After a brief interlude, Raikō attacks the spider in his lair (represented by a small framework adorned with webbing); fighting with his spider-slashing sword, Kumokiri, he defeats him in a vigorous battle during which the spider keeps tossing spider webs over his assailant until the floor is littered with them.

Umewaka Kisho, Katayama Kuroemon. Photo: Masahito Ono.

Some cost-cutting was apparent when only Raikō fought the spider. In full-scale productions Raikō has other warriors join the attack. Also, traditional nō uses a chorus of at least eight singers seated in two rows at stage left, facing the acting area, not the audience. In this production, only four chorus members are present, and they sat upstage right, one pair behind the other, facing the actors on an angle.

Katayama Kuroemon, Umewaka Kisho. Photo: Masahito Ono.

TSUCHIGUMO is far more action-oriented than most nō plays and was surely selected because it doesn’t require much appreciation of its musical or poetic aesthetics. Aside from the helpful synopses in the program, which few spectators bother to read when they take their seats, no translations were provided, not even in the form of surtitles. Most Japanese, who seemed to make up the majority of the audience, don’t understand the difficult, archaic nō language, so, even for them, a play with lots of action is obviously going to be better received than something more literary, no matter how respected for its artistic values.

After an intermission, Ebizō—the evening’s main attraction—appeared in SHUNKYŌ KAGAMIJISHI, a piece created for Ichikawa Danjūrō IX in 1893. It became part of his collection of greatest hits, the Shin Kabuki Jūhachiban (New Kabuki Eighteen), a group of plays in which Ebizō takes a special interest. This popular dance play, performed with a sizable complement of nagauta musicians and singers seated on a red, two-tiered platform behind him (a traditional setting would suggest the interior of a palace, with painted, sliding walls), offered the star a chance to show his versatility. In part one, he appeared as a gentle, docile court lady who, against her will, is induced to practice a dance for the New Year’s celebrations. Her dancing includes lots of difficult movements requiring dance fans, but she eventually starts to dance with a carved, wooden lion’s head mask held in her right hand. As she dances, a pair of butterflies, manipulated by a stage assistant, capture the masks’ attention, and it snaps at the butterflies. Soon its intensity has taken over the poor girl’s body and pulls her offstage reluctantly as she fights its power.

An interlude ensues in which two children appear and do a complex dance. The kids were played by the 10-year-old Ichikawa Fukunosuke and the 14-year-old Ichikawa Fukutarō, neither of them the child of a kabuki actor. They were so entrancing and their skills so polished they stole everyone’s hearts, especially the tiny Fukunosuke, who looked younger than 10, at least from nosebleed heaven.

Ichikaa Ebizo. Photo: Masahito Ono.

Then Ebizō reappeared as the stomping, romping, masculine lion, in a gorgeous costume with wide sleeves, his face made up in red and white kumadori-style makeup, and with a huge, trailing white wig on his head. The contrast between the lion and the maiden couldn’t have been sharper, nor a better way of demonstrating the actor’s range. Ebizō’s dancing also celebrated his sheer athleticism, as it required him to swing the long wig around in what is called the kamiarai or hair-washing convention, which he did over and over until you thought his head might go flying off.

Ichikawa Fukutaro, Ichikawa Ebizo, Ichikawa Fukunosuke. Photo: Masahito Ippei.

The stage for each piece on the program was covered with the polished, raised flooring used in kabuki, called shosa butai, which allows the actors to move smoothly over its surface in their tabi socks and to make resonant sounds when they stomp on it. A few tall, folding screens with bamboo stalks painted on them served as the chief decorative background, and, for the nō play, a passageway was cleared for exits and entrances at stage right, where the bridgeway (hashigakari) would be in a Japanese theatre. The bridgeway wasn’t essential to either of the nōgaku performances, but what was clearly missing was some indication of the pillars that support the roof over a traditional nōgaku stage. When, for example, the Japan Society offers nōgaku it uses short, square stumps to indicate the pillars.

Ichikawa Ebizo. Photo: Masahito Ono.

More difficult for purists to accept was the lack of an audience runway (hanamichi) for SHUNKYŌ KAGAMIJISHI. Such runways, which require a platform on the same level as the stage to run down an aisle or off to one side of the auditorium, are notoriously difficult to construct in non-kabuki theatres, forcing the actors to exit to stage right, just as they would on a nō bridgeway. SHUNKYŌ KAGAMIJISHI has memorable business on the runway as the court lady is dragged off through the auditorium by the wooden lion mask on her hand. I first saw this in the fall of 1963 at the Shinbashi Enbujō and have never forgotten it, although I've seen many later productions. When the lion later appears after taking over the lady’s body, his runway entrance is equally remarkable. The absence of a hanamichi is something touring kabuki always has to deal with and it’s just one of those things that have to be taken in stride. Shikata ga nai (You can’t do anything about it), as the Japanese say.

AN EVENING OF JAPANESE TRADITIONAL THEATRE was an evening well spent, even from my perch in outer space. 

156. Review: SMOKEFALL (seen February 27, 2016)

"Time Past and Time Future"

Stars range from 5-1.

For my review of SMOKEFALL, please click on THE BROADWAY BLOG.

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SMOKEFALL

Lucille Lortel Theatre

121 Christopher Street, NYC

Through March 13

Brian Hutchinson, Taylor Richardson. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Brian Hutchinson, Zachary Quinto. Photo: Taylor Richardson.

Robin Tunney, Brian Hutchinson. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Taylor Richardson. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Tom Bloom, Robin Tunney, Brian Hutchinson, Taylor Richardson. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Zachary Quinto, Taylor Richardson. Photo: Joan Marcus.

155. Review: STRAIGHT (seen February 25, 2016)

“Bent”

Stars range from 5-1.

Nowadays, when you see a play title using the word “straight,” you can be pretty sure it’s about sexuality, not geometry. (See, for example, last season’s STRAIGHT WHITE MEN and the still-running SEX TIPS FOR STRAIGHT WOMEN FROM A GAY MAN.) In fact, nowadays, you can be pretty sure that almost every other play you see is about sexual identity. Scott Elmegreen and Drew Fornarola’s tolerably diverting STRAIGHT, adds yet another script to this growing library of Mars-Venus-and any gods in-between plays. 

Thomas E. Sullivan, Jake Epstein. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

STRAIGHT mingles rom-com with bromance, bouncing around conventional comic dialogue with serious issues that tip it into dramedy territory. Using a not particularly original premise reminiscent of Noël Coward’s carefully closeted DESIGN FOR LIVING (1932), STRAIGHT is about the choice the sexually ambivalent investment banker Ben (Jake Epstein, blandly appealing) must make when he finds himself in love simultaneously with a woman, Emily (Jenna Gavigan, sweetly likeable), and a man, Chris (Thomas E. Sullivan, boyishly charming).

Jake Epstein, Jenna Gavigan. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

Everything happens in the Boston bachelor pad of the 26-year-old Ben. When the play opens, he and Chris, a nearly-21-year old, Boston College student, are watching sports on TV and drinking beer. They’re new acquaintances, the cool, more experienced younger dude having the edge in what’s about to transpire. Ben, in fact, has never done this kind of thing before. As intimacy beckons, a call from Emily (what would plays do without cell phones?) completes the setup. Later, we’ll learn she’s a 27-year-old, Harvard Ph.D. candidate in bioinformatics (a field related to genetics), and that she and Ben have been dating since they were at U-Penn (whose memorabilia provide prop and costume elements). She wants him to move in with her and can’t understand what’s holding him back.

Jake Epstein, Thomas E. Sullivan. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

The play shifts back and forth between scenes involving Ben and Emily and Ben and Chris, until, finally, there's a scene with all three after Emily enters when Chris and Ben are together; Ben struggles comically to cover the compromising situation, as in countless bedroom farces; the scene misfires both because of Ben's overdone attempts to deflect attention and Emily's obliviousness to what's right under her nose. Amusingly, Ben finds himself forced to leave Chris and Emily—who immediately like each other—alone together, which raises expectations since Chris, although less so than Ben, has had close encounters of the female kind.  

Jake Epstein, Thomas E. Sullivan. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

Regardless of the comic byplay, STRAIGHT is really more concerned with how Ben--unable to fully accept being tagged as gay--works out his issues of attraction, even love, for Chris, while keeping his secret from Emily, whom he also loves, and who, for all her intelligence, remains perpetually (and unconvincingly) in the dark. In a sense, STRAIGHT is simply another cheating hearts play, with the twist being the same-sex angle. Ben, of course, must make a decision, for which we’re forced to wait patiently. Audiences will surely take sides about which partner he chooses, which may be the play’s most controversial aspect. My companion, a professor involved in LGBT issues, insisted—given Ben’s extended dilemma—the play is 15 years behind the times.

Thomas E. Sullivan, Jake Epstein. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

STRAIGHT occasionally veers off into didactic sidebars. One is a chatty discussion between the guys about the acceptance of homosexuals in society, such as you might hear on afternoon TV; it seems aimed more at informing the audience than at moving the dramatic needle. There’s also a bit about investment banking that sounds like a scene from THE BIG SHORT. And Emily’s specialty of bioinformatics allows her to say things like, “So I’m looking at the relevant loci in a sample group, and the idea is to try and isolate the chemical processes that link lifestyle factors with genetic predisposition.” This too-convenient way of introducing the nature-nurture debate surrounding sexual orientation merely emphasizes how contrived the writing often seems to be. 

Thomas E. Sullivan, Jake Epstein, Jenna Gavigan. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

Charlie Corcoran’s generic apartment setting offers one more variation on how to decorate your living room/kitchen, Grant Yeager’s lighting is unobtrusive (although the lights could be taken down more during the scene transitions), and Michael McDonald has dressed the actors in convincing duds. Much of STRAIGHT is clichéd but Andy Samberg’s direction keeps it moving, there's some entertaining dialogue, the actors are engaging, there’s a lot of smooching and underwear displaying, and, best of all, it's over in an intermissionless 85 minutes.

Jake Epstein, Jenna Gavigan. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

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STRAIGHT

Acorn Theatre

410 West Forty-Second Street, NYC

Through May 8