282-286. Reviews of BULLETS OVER BROADWAY; FISHING FOR WIVES; LADY DAY AT EMERSON'S BAR AND GRILL; ADORATION OF THE OLD WOMAN; THE INTERNATIONAL

THE 2013-SEASON ENDS: PART I

As the New York theatre awards season comes busily racing toward its end my time is being busily gobbled up with constant theatergoing and awards deliberations. Thus I’m able to provide only brief reviews of the season’s final shows. I've also listed in chronological order shows that I’ve seen but that haven’t officially opened yet.

282. BULLETS OVER BROADWAY

(Seen Monday April 7, 2014)

 

 

As the lights go down at the St. James Theatre at the start of this new musical comedy, set in the Roaring Twenties, a black-garbed, machine gun-toting hoodlum enters and lets loose a barrage of bullets aimed at the art deco show curtain, the bullet holes spelling out the title, BULLETS OVER BROADWAY. Judging by what follows, not a few of the bullets hit the show itself, leaving some holes that remain gaping throughout. That’s not to say that this adaptation by Woody Allen of his 1994 movie of the same title, with a screenplay by Allen and Douglas McGrath, is lacking in lots to admire; it’s only that what promised to be the season’s blockbuster show has turned out to be an uneven concoction, sharing with several others, like BIG FISH, THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, and FAR FROM HEAVEN, the distinction of being unable to turn a hit movie into an equally successful musical. At this point, the most successful such venture appears to be ALADDIN, based on the Disney animated film.

 Zach Braff, Marin Mazzie. Photo: Paul Kolnik. 

 

 BULLETS OVER BROADWAY company. Photo: Paul Kolnik.

 

Mr. Allen’s movie, with its broadly written and heightened performances, is readymade for the musical comedy stage, but its current adaptation adds Pelion to Ossa, pushing the show too far into caricature and, except in a few instances, away from believability. The high points are William Ivey Long’s knockout costumes for the mobsters, chorines, and show biz figures, the multifaceted sets of Santo Loquasto, the scintillating lighting of Donald Holder, the smashing choreography of Susan Stroman (who also directed), and the dynamic performance of Nick Cordero in the Chaz Palmintieri part of the tough guy whose rewrites of a new play by young dramatist David Shayne (Zach Braff) are better than the original. For all Mr. Allen’s genius, BULLETS OVER BROADWAY’s biggest hole is its paucity of unforced laughs.

 

BULLETS OVER BROADWAY company. Photo: Paul Kolnik.

To a degree this may be because Mr. Braff lacks humor; moreover, he’s only an ordinary singer, lacking charisma, and failing badly at channeling the Allen persona, which John Cusack did much better in the film. Much as I love watching and listening to her, Marin Mazzie’s turn as star actress Helen Sinclair goes a bit too far in a role that Ms. Wiest (who won the Academy Award) already was on the verge of overdoing; Heléne Yorke is irritatingly shrill in the Jennifer Tilley role of the dumb chorus girl, Olive Neal; and Karen Ziemba is wasted in the Tracey Ullman role as actress Eden Brent. Brooks Ashmanskas as the food-guzzling actor Warner Purcell brings comic zest and physical dexterity to the Jim Broadbent part, although he seems a bit too fey to be convincing as Olive’s potential lover.

 

Vincent Pastore, Heléne Yorke. Photo: Paul Kolnik.

 

BULLETS OVER BROADWAY uses a score made up of little-known and standard songs from the period, the familiar ones including “I’m Sitting on Top of the World,” “Runnin’ Wild,” “She’s Funny That Way,” “Let’s Misbehave,” “Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do,” “There’ll Be Some Changes,” “Up a Lazy River,” and “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” which provides an energetic conclusion to the proceedings. Betsy Wolfe as Ellen, David’s wife, gives a terrific rendition of the classic “I’ve Found a New Baby,” joined by Mr. Braff, while the lesser-known “The Hot Dog Song,” sung by Olive, gets a farcically phallic production number with chorus boys dressed as frankfurters.  Most of the songs blend well with the book, but I would have preferred at least one emotionally moving ballad; the overall emphasis is on numbers with an upbeat tempo.

 

Marin Mazzie. Photo: Paul Kolnik.

BULLETS OVER BROADWAY may have enough going for it to become a hit. Still, it stands out from the rest of the season’s mediocre musical theatre offerings only in relative terms. I was hoping for a bazooka over Broadway but what I got was only a loud pistol.

283. FISHING FOR WIVES

(Seen Tuesday, April 8, 2014) 

 

 

I saw the Pan-Asian Repertory’s production of Hawaii-born playwright Edward Sakamoto’s play, FISHING FOR WIVES, at the Clurman Theatre at a morning show attended by a group of kids from Nathanial Hawthorne Middle School, in Bayside, Queens. The young audience was very attentive and well-behaved, although there were some sexually suggestive scenes, including one in which a presumably lesbian character massages another woman in a private place, which caused giggles and titters. Still, the boys and girls were more appreciative than I about a plot set in 1913 Hawaii, about Nishi Takeo (Viet Vo), a young Japanese immigrant fisherman, who sends for a Japanese picture bride, using a photo of his good-looking friend Aoki Tsutomu (Bobby Foley) instead of his own. The woman, Yamamoto Shizuko (Kiyo Takami), arrives, but, although she weds the unattractive Takeo, who is frequently compared to a toad, she makes no bones about her attraction to Tsutomu.

From left: Viet Vo, Kiyo Takami, Bobby Foley. Photo: John Quincy Lee.

Various comic complications evolve, including the sending to Japan by Tsutomu’s father for a picture-bride to marry his son. Umeko (Rebecca Lee Lerman) arrives but suffers from jealousy so she’s sent back, which also happens to Ihara Aiko (Akiko Hiroshima), who’s into kabuki dancing and martial arts, and has an inclination toward Shizuko. She, too, is sent back, so a third woman is sent for.  As with the other brides, she is first introduced by showing her onboard the ship from Japan, seasick and worried about what faces her in Hawaii. This device proves repetitive and unnecessary. The third wife, Murashima Miki (Allison Hiroto), turns out to be as solid as an oak and a stabilizing influence on all concerned. Shizuko, who until now has exerted all her efforts to making sure no woman gets between her and Tsutomu, alters her behavior after Takeo appears to have drowned, and all comes to a happy end.

The value of Mr. Sakamoto’s play lies in its picture of how Japanese immigrants came to Hawaii, where they became a dominant force, and were assimilated into American culture. As a play, however, it suffers from stereotypical characters, simplistic plotting, and bland dialogue.

Sheryl Lu’s low-budget set design, which emphasizes the folk-like nature of the material, offers only a scenic backdrop showing a postcard-like picture of a beach in Hawaii, with raised, pier-like planking downstage of and parallel to it. Carol A. Pelletier’s costumes, however, especially the women’s kimonos, offer a touch of authenticity to the show. Ron Nakahara’s direction is stiff and unimaginative, and the acting earnest but unimpressive. There is, however, a well-done sequence combining Marie Yamamoto’s lighting, Ian Wehrle’s sound design, and Mr. Vo’s miming that gives a valid impression of someone drowning.

While the rather fishy play failed to lure me, I can’t say the same for the student audience, which went for the play, hook, line, and sinker.

 284. LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR AND GRILL

(Seen Tuesday, April 8, 2014)

 

 

All you need to say is Audra McDonald if you want to symbolize first-class, Broadway-level singing and acting talent.  Combine that five-time Tony Award winning name in a show whose title bears another that carries with it the aura of invincible musical ability and you’d seem to have a sure-fire guarantee of success. And that would seem to be the strategy behind the revival of LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR AND GRILL, by Lanie Robertson, a 1986 play with music (or musical, as some might consider it), which originally starred Lonette McKee as Billie Holiday in a lauded production at Off Broadway’s Vineyard Theatre.

 

Audra McDonald, Shelton Becton. Photo: Evgenia Eliseeva

 

Audra McDonald, Roxie. Photo: Evgenia Eliseeva

Billie Holiday, as she was in March 1959, might not seem a perfect fit for the robustly healthy-looking Ms. McDonald, as the late singer was then several months away from her death of cirrhosis and heart failure, and was a gaunt impression of her former self. But when the theatre magic of a great performer embodying that of another is before you, you tend to forgive such discrepancies, which in lesser circumstances might be game changers.

LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR AND GRILL directed by Lonnie Price, takes place in the eponymous Philadelphia saloon where Lady Day is giving one of her last performances, and is essentially a monologue to her patrons about her life and its vicissitudes; most of the material is gloomy but there are a couple of funny stories. Much of the same biographical material was presented in LADY DAY earlier in the season, when Dee Dee Bridgewater played the great jazz singer in a show built around her behavior during a rehearsal (see my review under the October 2013 listings). Billie Holiday had a rough life, racial and addiction issues being only part of the mix, but this troubled soul transformed her feelings into a distinctive jazz style matched by very few.

Billie has several brief colloquies with her piano player, Jimmy Powers (Shelton Becton), but the other musicians, a drummer (Clayton Craddock) and bassist (George Farmer), say nothing; their smooth ensemble playing, though, makes a great contribution to the production. The Circle in the Square’s oblong arena has been converted into the semblance of a night club, with cabaret tables in the U-shaped pit, a bandstand at the far end, and a bar at the other. Projections behind the bandstand of people in her life are occasionally shown. The singer, wearing a beautiful white gown, designed by Isosa, remains mainly on the bandstand but does amble off to the bar, and exits at one point to reemerge with her tiny Chihuahua Pepi (Roxie). Now and then she has some interplay with male patrons in the cabaret section. She drinks a lot and, judging by the way she wears one of her white gloves at one point, has been injecting herself with heroin while offstage.

Ms. McDonald sings 15 songs, most of them in full, so the evening has the feel of a concert performance. The familiar songs are there, including “God Bless the Child,” “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” “Strange Fruit,” “T’ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do” (also being heard in BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, with a different spelling for the first word), and many more, all sung in the classic Holiday style, but sometimes with a slight slur to suggest the artist’s being high. When Lonette McKee played the role in 1986, D.J.R. Bruckner wrote in his New York Times review, “Her voice is thrilling. She does not mimic Holiday's sound, and certainly not her tempos. But she gives the impression that somehow Billie Holiday has got inside her and is emerging through her. Her musicianship is faultless, and so is her acting. The woman she embodies is dying, but what impresses one is her strength. It is not desperate or agonized. She seems a beautiful, ruined piece of nature.” Ditto for Ms. McDonald.

 ACT ONE

(Seen Wednesday, April 9, 2014: matinee)

Opens April 17.

ADORATION OF THE OLD WOMAN

(Seen Wednesday, April 9, 2014: evening)

 

 

José Rivera’s ADORATION OF THE OLD WOMAN at INTAR, the W. 52nd Street company that champions Latino theatre, has a cast including Raul Castillo of TV’s “Looking” (he got his start here), but the performer who stands out for me in this generally well-acted piece of magic realism is the pretty young actress Carmen Zilles, who plays Vanessa, a Paterson, New Jersey 17-year-old with an attitude and, when first seen, punkish tastes. Carmen’s parents send her down to a small, rural town in Puerto Rico sometime in “the near future” to stay with her great grandmother, Doña Belen (Socorro Santiago), a spry and foul-mouthed but very pious old woman who claims to be between 100 and 150 years old, and whose bedroom is haunted by the angry ghost of Adoración (Danielle Davenport), the mistress of Doña Belen’s late husband.

 

 

Raul Castillo, Socorro Santiago. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

 

 

The place of the ghost in this multiple-strand play is tenuously related to its concerns with the coming of age story of Vanessa, a political conflict regarding whether Puerto Rico should become the 51st state, potentially weakening its identity, or an independent country, and the romantic entanglements of Vanessa with two young men, Ismael (Mr. Castillo), a smooth-talking real estate agent who argues for statehood, and the radical Cheo (José Joaquín Peréz), who decides to switch from peaceful agitation to revolutionary action when the voters opt for statehood.  As Vanessa, whose falls for Cheo, gets more and more comfortable in her new environment, even diligently learning Spanish, she blossoms into a young lady with growing affection for Puerto Rico and her previously neglected heritage, a transformation made palpably credible by Ms. Zilles.

 

Socorro Santiago, Danielle Davenport. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

There’s much good writing in this poetic but dramatically lumpy play; the dialogue is often rich and salty, with much to ponder intellectually, politically, and emotionally, but the ghost and her story don’t work for me nor does its dramatic payoff. (I must add that my companion had a much more positive response.) Although most of the play is in English, Mr. Rivera and director Patricia McGregor have found a way to make it clear when people are talking English or Spanish by tonal and verbal means.

 

 

Carmen Zilles, José Joaquín Peréz. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Ryan Howell’s functional set, well lit by Miguel Angel Valderamma, divides Doña Belen’s shanty-like house into a bedroom and living room, and surrounds the space around the set with a brown sand-like substance that a friend thought, from the smell, to be crushed cocoa beans. Dede M. Ayite’s costumes establish the characters well, and the red dress worn by Ms. Zilles looks great on her, but whoever’s responsible for the awful wig worn by Ms. Santiago should have their hair shaved off as punishment for creating such an eyesore in an otherwise nicely integrated piece. 

OF MICE AND MEN

(seen Thursday, April 10, 2014)

Opens April 16.

 YOUR MOTHER’S COPY OF THE KAMA SUTRA

(Seen Friday, April 11, 2014)

Opens April 21, 2014.

 VIOLET

(Seen Saturday, April 12, 2014: matinee)

Opens April 20, 2014.

 THE VELOCITY OF AUTUMN

(Seen Saturday, April 12, 2014: evening)

Opens April 21, 2014. 

THE INTERNATIONAL

(Seen Sunday, April 13, 2014: matinee) 

 

My second visit this season to the tiny cell theatre (spelled with lower case letters), situated on W. 23rd Street in what appears to be a 19th-century building that once was a private home, was to see Christopher Randolph’s wonderfully integrated staging of THE INTERNATIONAL, a three-character piece reportedly based on the 1995 Bosnian-Serbian war, although not specifically mentioned as such in the script. The previous piece I reviewed here, given by another company, was HARD TIMES, a fine musical about Stephen Foster. THE INTERNATIONAL, presented by the Origin Theatre Company, is a serious 90-minute play about moral responsibility during a horrendous conflict. (The play was premiered in a 2013 workshop production as part of Origin’s Next Generation Series during its 1st Irish Theatre Festival.)

 

From left: Ted Schneider, Carey Van Driest, Timothy Carter. Photo: Michael Priest.

The audience sits on straight-back metal chairs, each with a thin foam pad, facing a hanging triptych of abstract paintings whose images you may find some meaning in before the play concludes. Similar pictures hang on either wall; presumably they are the work of set designer James Maloff. The three characters are first seen observing these pictures as if in an art gallery, but when the play proper begins they each remain on or very near a small bench of their own. Hans (Timothy Carter) is a graying Dutchman in corduroy jacket and plaid shirt who occupies upstage left; Irene (Carey Van Driest), down center, is a Bosnian Muslim wearing a form-fitting black top and long black skirt, her hair tightly covered in a kerchief; and Dave (Ted Schneider), an American living in Los Angeles, wears the casual clothes of an average young husband and father. The costumes are by Tristan Raines.

There’s no dialogue among the three characters, each of whom delivers their own narrative, interwoven with the others, until we gradually understand how they are all related. Irene, a farmwoman, is a witness and victim of the war when it comes to her village, expressing the horrors she was forced to undergo to save her child, and undergoing an erosion of her identity. Hans is an increasingly frustrated officer in the International (the UN isn’t mentioned), a peacekeeping battalion stationed in the war zone to protect the local citizens from the unnamed enemy but prevented by legal restrictions from fighting unless attacked. And Dave is a struggling artist/truck driver, hoping to save his marriage by winning $1,000 to take his wife and child to Disneyland, bets with his male relatives on the outcome of the war, which he watches on TV, and which—despite his conflicted feelings—he wants to end badly for the people being attacked so that he can win the money.

Each is exceptionally well acted by the trio, which forms a wonderful ensemble, albeit one without direct interaction or dialogue with the others. One might argue with minor elements of their performances, such as Ms. Van Driest’s too-frequent tendency to chuckle at some of her comments as a sort of self-defensive tic against letting the enormity of what she’s gone through overwhelm her. Mr. Carter begins with a mildly Dutch accent but as the play proceeds it takes on a British tinge. Nevertheless, the performance, while dealing with material that—apart from Dave’s wager—is not especially new (plays and films emphasizing the inhumanity of human beings during war are rather common), keeps you riveted, especially with the actors so close. I was especially impressed by the presence of the striking Ms. Van Driest, who has a strikingly statuesque physique and a facial bone structure that, when effectively lit, as it is here by Derek Van Heel, gives her an appearance that would make her ideal for classical roles.

Mr. Van Heel, working on a low budget, makes the most of it, not only by his lighting of Ms. Van Driest, but by what he does to illuminate the paintings, especially the triptych, which the lights reveal as actually translucent. THE INTERNATIONAL ties its simple visual elements together with a brilliantly coordinated sound design by Benjamin Furiga in a superbly blended way so that they mesh seamlessly with the outstanding acting of the three performers. This is good theatre about a disturbing situation that deserves strong support.

THE LIBRARY

(Seen Sunday, April 13, 2014: evening)

Opens April 15, 2014.

281. Review of DON'T WAKE ME: THE BALLAD OF NIHAL ARMSTRONG (April 6, 2014)

281. DON’T WAKE ME: THE BALLAD OF NIHAL ARMSTRONG

The first thing I wondered about as this solo performance piece concluded at 59E59 was why the compelling actress, Jaye Griffiths, would subject herself to such a grueling emotional experience night after night. She was so totally immersed in telling the story of a British mother whose child, a boy named Nihal, was born with severe cerebral palsy and died at 17, that—not having looked at the program beforehand—I was convinced the actress was the character she was playing.  Was this some kind of masochistic therapy, like a primal scream? Only when my companion noted that the play had been written by the real mother, the journalist Rahila Gupta, and not by Ms. Griffiths, did I realize my mistake; judging from conversations with friends, I wasn’t alone in making this error.  

Jaye Griffiths. Photo: Carol Rosegg. 

The script recounts the painful birth of Ms. Gupta’s son, her learning of his disability, her travails and joys in raising him, his medical setbacks and treatments, his intellectual achievements, his various experiences—pleasant and unpleasant, but mainly the latter—as his mother sought the best educational opportunities for him, and his early death. It’s written in a poetic style that, while overly literary at times, serves to slightly distance the material and prevent it from becoming too emotionally overwhelming; this, however, fails to stop Ms. Griffiths from finding her way to its pulsating heart and embodying all the high and low feelings that Ms. Gupta invests in her writing.

Ms. Griffiths, a slender 51-year old British actress, is gifted with a magnificent voice and crystalline diction; she’s the kind of actress one expects to see playing the grand roles of classical drama, but in DON’T WAKE ME (an entry in the Brits Off-Broadway Festival) she’s a contemporary mother faced with the anguish and desperation of raising a seriously handicapped child; she brings to the role, with its demandingly heightened language, all the hope and love that we wish such children always receive. Her celebration of Nihal’s small victories, her determination to make his life easier, and her grief upon his passing are registered with intense power and conviction. Unfortunately, the play comes off as too relentlessly grim, and, at the end, following an overextended section dwelling on the boy’s death, we’re nearly as exhausted from the ordeal as Ms. Griffiths, who was nominated for Best Solo Performance at the Edinburgh Festival in 2013.

The 60-minute piece has been effectively staged by Guy Slater in 59E59’s tiny Theater C, with just a few props, including a bassinet and two wheelchairs whose differing sizes suggest the growing Nihal. A picture of Nihal sits on an easel at stage right and a coat rack with a few costume items is upstage. The show’s minimalist design is credited to Elroy Ashmore, and incidental music is supplied by Sophie Cotton.   

DON’T WAKE ME deals with depressing material, but the talent of Jaye Griffiths raises it to the level of theatre art.

280. Review of THE MOST DESERVING (April 6, 2014)

280. THE MOST DESERVING

Caroline Trieschmann’s THE MOST DESERVING, the latest offering from the Women’s Project, located in City Center’s Stage II venue, is an amusing, if cartoonish, comedy that seeks to shred the politically correct circumstances surrounding arts grants and funding. It shoots some spiky barbs into the process, with broadly drawn characters representing an arts council in a small town in Ellis County, Kansas. They consist of Edie Kelch (Kristin Griffith), a wealthy, recently widowed arts patron; Dwayne Dean (Adam LeFevre), a man who turned to art when he lost his job; Liz Chang (Jennifer Lim), an ambitious Asian-American art historian who keeps boring everyone with reminders that she has an M.A.; Ted Atkinson (Daniel Pearce), a middle-aged, British-born reporter; and, most memorably, Jolene Atkinson (Veanne Cox), Ted’s wife and the chairperson of the committee. The group’s makeup is highly questionable, but does provide a disparate assortment of eccentric personalities that gives rise to several risible situations.

Ray Anthony Thomas, Jennifer Lim. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

The council is deliberating over the granting of $20,000 to the winner of an arts competition, and the choice boils down to three artists, one of them being Rick Duffy, whom we never see but who is the son of a politician responsible for the council’s budget. This, of course, would immediately disqualify the son in any real competition, just as would the involvement of council member and award competitor Dwayne, who claims that what makes his art original is that he paints only vice presidents. Also, the presence of a husband and wife on the same small council would be a universal no-no.

Jennifer Lim, Kristin Griffith, Veanne Cox. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

The most worthwhile artist, partly because he best satisfies the requirement that the winner be from an underrepresented group, is an indigent, wheelchair-bound, possibly crazy, black man, Everett Whiteside (Ray Anthony Thomas), whose candidacy is strongly supported by Liz, who hopes the book she says she's writing about him will get her out of Kansas. Everett creates religious sculptures from found objects, or what some call “junk.” A sizable chunk of the play’s humor is based on what constitutes a minority, with Rick Duffy’s claim to be 1/16th Sioux Indian countered by a claim Dwayne makes that gets one of the show’s biggest yocks.

The ensemble is quite good, with a special nod to Kristin Griffith as the glamorous blonde widow, but leading the humor brigade is the priceless Veanne Cox as the council chairperson, prim and proper on the outside but red hot in the bedroom when she tries to influence her husband’s vote for Rick Duffy—she wants to get his father to increase the council’s funding—by dressing in sexy lingerie and trying to seduce him. Jolene has the super-officiousness of a bureaucrat with an agenda who refuses to welcome any ideas contrary to her own, so when we see her other side, the results are hilarious.

Ms. Trieschmann’s play, briskly directed by Shelley Butler, walks an unsteady tonal tightrope as it shifts from office satire to bedroom farce to serious discussion (a scene between Liz and Everett), and some of the situations and characters are way too far-fetched for plausibility. For the most part, though, the production’s 90 minutes fly by swiftly and produce some of the loudest laughs you’ll hear this season.

David M. Barber’s set is adaptable to the multiple locales of conference room, artist’s studio, bedroom, and so on, and the costumes of Donald Sanders, the lighting of Traci Klainer Polimeni, and the sound design of Leon Rothenberg provide satisfactory visual and aural support.

I’ve sat on committees like the one poked fun at in THE MOST DESERVING, and appreciate the premises on which its satire is based, even if Ms. Trieschmann over-exaggerates for comedic effect. This may not be the most deserving play in New York, but it does deserve kudos for keeping the comic ball in the air so much of the time.   

279. Review of GREED: A MUSICAL FOR OUR TIMES (April 5, 2014)

GREED: A MUSICAL FOR OUR TIMES

 

 

From Plautus’ THE POT OF GOLD to Molière’s THE MISER to Martin Scorcese’s THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, greed has long provided a rich vein of comic and serious ore for theatre and filmmakers to mine. Only within the past week or so, New York has seen the opening of such greed-related shows as THE THREEPENNY OPERA and THE HEIR APPARENT. The subject is now the heart of a satirical revue, GREED: A MUSICAL FOR OUR TIMES, directed by Christopher Scott, at New World Stages. The book, music, and lyrics are by Michael Roberts and the 85-minute intermissionless show--a best musical winner at the 2006 NYC Fringe Festival--features four performers, two men and two women. The ladies are Julia Burrows and Stephanie D’Abruzzo; the men are James Donegan and Neal Mayer. Each is pleasant and moderately talented, but none stands out either for comic or vocal distinction; less shrillness and fewer flat notes might have helped. 

 

From left: Neil Mayer, Julia Burrows, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, James Donegan. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

The producers haven’t spent much money on sets or musicians, depending mainly on Josh Iacovelli’s arrangement of black velvet curtains for the background, and an onstage pianist and percussionist seated at stage right for the music. There are some clever lyrics in the songs, but not all of them are on the same level, and an hour and a half of song after song about covetousness verges on overkill.

 

One routine, “Financial Advisor,” has a couple visiting such a specialist only for the seemingly dumb blonde wife (Ms. Burrows) to know more about the subject than the jargon-spouting advisor (Ms. D’Abruzzo). There’s a bit about a jealous man who thinks his friend has everything better than him; another, “When I Saw the Doctor,” about medical greed; and one, “Inside Information,” about inside trading. “A Little Juice” is about steroid use in sports, with three performers sticking their heads atop cardboard paintings of muscle-bound athletes (one in a Yankees uniform), while “The Ballad of Jamie Dimon,” done as a cowboy song, describes the avariciousness of that billionaire.

 

A Dolly Parton type (Ms. Burrows) boasts in “Another Kid” about making money off the federal welfare state by having illegitimate children, and then, in the show’s most tasteless bit, sings about plotting to have a disabled kid to make even more. The Catholic Church is blasted for seeking monetary power at the expense of doing “God’s Work,” while art patrons are skewered in “It’s Mine,” a song spread through the show in three parts sending up different aspects of the theme. People who have accidents in public places like malls are sent up in “Slip ‘N’ Fall,” and Ponzi scheme mavin Bernard Madoff, already knocked (indirectly) this season in THE UNAVOIDABLE DISAPPEARANCE OF TOM DURNIN and THE COMMONS OF PENSACOLA, gets his comical comeuppance in “It’s Bernie.” Madoff may be worth a thrust or two for bringing Ponzi schemes back to public attention, but the original Ponzi himself gets his own number, “Charlie’s Song.” And, of course, what’s a show about modern greed without taking the knives to mortgage fraud in “Passing the Mortgages.” 

 

There haven’t been many revues this season, Off or on Broadway, and, apart perhaps from AFTER DARK, those that have appeared mostly have been second-rate. Sort of makes one greedy for another edition of FORBIDDEN BROADWAY, wouldn’t you say?

278. Review of NO PAROLE (April 4, 2014)

278. NO PAROLE

Carlo D'Amore.

NO PAROLE is a solo performance written by and starring Carlo D’Amore, a Peruvian-born actor, director, and writer who is  billed as the "creative director and owner of Live IN Theater Productions." It’s being given in a gymnasium on the fourth floor of Hartley House, on W. 46th Street, which provides social, cultural, and recreational services to the Hell’s Kitchen community. Part of the gym has been partitioned for the intimate performance, in which Mr. D’Amore stands on a simple black platform (there are no design credits) to recount his experiences with his eccentric mother, whom he describes as a con artist; he plays her both as a young mother and when older, after she’d suffered a stroke and come to live with him. To tell his tale of coming to terms with her behavior, which covers three continents over a period of 40 years, he plays multiple other roles as well, using no actual hand props (he holds his fingers together to suggest a joint) and switching rapidly from character to character. One of his best characterizations is that of a flirtatious worker in a gay health clinic.

 

Mr. D’Amore, who wears a colorful, short-sleeved Ed Hardy t-shirt over a long-sleeved one throughout, is a gifted mimic but his performance jumps so rapidly from persona to persona, and with so many leaps in the time frame, that the narrative grows muddled; I found myself spending as much time observing and contemplating his technique as attending to what he was saying.  

 

In the piece, which has been performed elsewhere since at least 2008, Mr. D'Amore reveals his mother as a hell of a character, showing her as a fake immigration lawyer, a bad check passer, an avid shoplifter, and, of course, a convict when she went to prison. Frustrated as she could often make him, he demonstrates the depth of his love for her, liar, thief, and fraud though she may have been. The material will be of interest only to dyed-in-the-wool fans of the solo performance genre.

 

277. Review of THE HEIR APPARENT (April 5, 2014)

277. THE HEIR APPARENT

  

THE HEIR APPARENT, playing at the CSC on E. 13th Street, is an adaptation (the word “translation” appears nowhere in the credits) by master comic dramatist David Ives of Jean-François Regnard’s 1708 farce LE LEGATAIRE UNIVERSEL. The play exists in a 1912 translation by Stark Young and a more recent one from 1986 by Freyda Thomas called THE HEIR TRANSPARENT (as well as SPLITTING HEIRS), which Ms. Thomas terms “an original play in verse loosely based on” Regnard. The only previous production of Regnard’s play in New York was in 1924 when it received a single performance, in the original French, by the visiting Comédie Française. Regnard was a devotee of Molière, especially of his commedia influences, which are very much in evidence in THE HEIR APPARENT. Like Thomas, Ives has cast his adaptation in rhymed verse; he also has maintained the play’s original period while tossing anachronisms around like croutons in a Caesar salad. I’ve seen only a sample of Thomas’s version, so I don’t know if she uses as many scatological references as does Ives, who not only includes lots of dialogue about ordure, enemas, piles, and farting, but even has a clock that includes the sound of passing gas before each hour is struck.
 

From left: Amelia Pedlow, Suzanne Bertish, Dave Quay. Photo: Richard Termine

  

From left: Claire Karpen, Paxton Whitehead, Dave Quay, David Pittu. Photo: Richard Termine.

 

With a nod to THE MISER, the play, which observes the unities of time, place, and action, is set in the chateau (beautifully designed by the incomparable John Lee Beatty) of the very wealthy but decrepit old miser Geronte (Paxton Whitehead). We meet the familiar Figaro-like servant Crispin (Carson Elrod), who seeks to help his master, Eraste (Dave Quay), inherit Geronte’s estate and thus enable him to wed the beautiful and wealthy Isabelle (Amelia Pedlow), when her mother, Mme. Argante (Suzanne Bertish) rejects him, and Geronte declares he will marry her himself. Crispin’s scheme, in Ives’s playful and witty recreation, involves him masquerading as an American frontiersman from New York (coonskin cap and all, courtesy of costumer David C. Woolard’s fertile imagination) and, in drag, as Geronte’s niece. The ailing Geronte, meanwhile, seems to have passed away, but he keeps coming back to life; during one of the old man’s deathbed episodes, Crispin disguises himself as Geronte in order to fool the tiny lawyer Scruple (David Pittu, playing the role on his knees) into writing a new will favoring Eraste, while providing Crispin with an annuity, and giving the servant girl Lisette (Claire Karpen) money on the condition she wed Crispin. This leads to a scene in which both the real and fake Geronte appear on stage simultaneously, creating riotous confusion. Ultimately, Geronte has a change of heart, recovers from his illness, appears in a fabulous silk suit, with long silver wig, and all ends happily.

 

From left: Dave Quay, Carson Elrod, Claire Karpen. Photo: Richard Termine.

 

This familiar bundle of conventional plot elements is perfectly suited to Ives’s sense of humor and is taken full advantage of by the humorously inventive staging of director John Rando and his team of capable actors and designers. For perhaps the first third of the play, the enjoyment level stays high enough so that we continue to appreciate all the broad slapstick devices, but eventually the persistently high spirits, spritely pace, linguistic deviltry, and cartoon characters wear a bit thin. Mr. Ives’s adaptation plays fast and loose with modern-day allusions; be prepared to hear references to Godzilla, kemosabi, the National Health Insurance, and the 99 percent. There’s also a good deal of profanity, including lines like, “You will have fucked yourself in royal fashion.”  F.U., of course, makes a perfect rhyme with nephew. Comedic bits of staging abound, such as a character’s lighting an ancient chandelier’s candles with a remote.

 

 

From left: Paxton Whitehead, Carson Elrod, Claire Karpen. Photo: Richard Termine.

 

Crispin, the energetically crafty manipulator who moves the plot along, needs to have a lighter touch than Carson Elrod gives him; we get his cleverness, but he pushes too hard to be really funny. Most of his fellow players are competent enough, but the truly deft farceurs who raise the performance to another level are Paxton Whitehead, Suzanne Bertish, and, most especially, David Pittu as the elegant pint-sized lawyer, bedecked in a classic red periwig, who must bear up under a barrage of jokes about his size. 

 

From left: Suzanne Bertish, Carson Elrod, Paxton Whitehead, Amelia Pedlow, Dave Quay, Claire Karpen. Photo: Richard Termine.

 

THE HEIR APPARENT, despite losing steam midway, is one of the better recent revivals of this type of play. A well-known critic and theatre historian acquaintance of mine exited the theatre at the end almost as if floating on air and asked if I felt as ecstatic as he about what we’d both just seen. He was distracted by someone else before I could reply, but if I’d been able to I would have said, “No, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a pretty good time anyway.”