86. Review: TRIP OF LOVE (seen October 21, 2015)

"A Hippie-Dippy Trip to Skip"

Stars range from 5-1.

 No decade of the last half of the 20th century was as politically and culturally revolutionary as the 1960s, which saw an explosive breakout in new theatre, music, film, and art. Hoping to memorialize that era in a musical revue, James Walski created TRIP OF LOVE; he also directed it, did the choreography, and co-designed its eye-catching sets (with the great Robin Wagner). Woefully, his promising idea has given birth to an overproduced, artistically underweight show—which premiered in Osaka in 2008—that seems little more than a corny, faux-nostalgia, cruise ship extravaganza.

David Elder, Dionne Figgins, and company. Photo: Matt Murphy.

In his program note, Mr. Walski declares that he hopes the show—playing at Off Broadway’s Stage 42 (formerly the Little Shubert), with its Broadway-sized stage—will revive the trend of such colorful Broadway song and dance musicals as BUBBLING BROWN SUGAR, SOPHISTICATED LADIES, DANCIN’, SUGAR BABIES, AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’, and the rest. (Three of the shows he mentions had all-black casts, but there’s only one such performer in TRIP OF LOVE, the gorgeous, gifted Dionne Figgins, who deserves better.) That trend, of course, hasn’t gone anywhere, as shows like 2013’s excellent AFTER MIDNIGHT make perfectly clear.

Austin Miller. Photo: Matt Murphy.

According to Mr. Walski, the thread that ties his show together is the dream experienced by a young girl—the Alice-like Caroline (Kelly Felthous)—who eats a magic mushroom after falling down the rabbit hole (signified by the Jefferson Airplane song, “White Rabbit”). So, yes, we get a lot of psychedelic effects, most of which, despite the effort, need jam to cover their cheesiness. The thread is extremely thin; in fact, it’s usually invisible, and what we get is a succession of barely related songs, each with its own colorful scenic background, usually dominated by Daniel Brodie’s intricate projections and Tamotsu Harada’s complex lighting. Now and then Caroline, engages in a budding romance with the handsome Adam (Austin Miller), but it’s just a flimsy ruse to create some sort of continuity.

Kelly Felthous. Photo: Matt Murphy.

Ms. Figgis, Mr. Miller, and Ms. Felthous are accompanied by four other lead performers, Laurie Wells, Tara Palsha, David Elder, and Joey Calveri. Of them, the statuesque Ms. Wells is the only one confined to singing, the rest being singer-dancers, each of them striking looking, with buff bodies. If shirtless dudes with ripped abs and pecs are your thing, this is your kind of show. The same could be said for the dozen-member ensemble, whose costumes are designed to make the most of their fat-free frames.

Laurie Wells. Photo: Matt Murphy.

Talented as the company is in the abstract, the performers—forced to cavort amidst too many distractions—generally fail to generate the star quality that the original performers brought to the show’s play list (the originals aren’t credited in the program). They’re not helped by emphatic, over-amplified orchestrations that favor loudness over subtlety. Given the diversity of the period’s music, of course, the music is all over the place, opening with Ms. Wells singing Michel Legrand’s “Windmills of Your Mind,” shifting to Ms. Felthous and Ms. Palsha combining in an ensemble version of “White Rabbit,” and then offering Mr. Calveri and company doing Iron Butterly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da Vida.”

From left: Laurie Wells, Austin Miller, Kelly Felthous. Photo: Matt Murphy.

The rest of act one provides Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” the Surfaris’ “Wipe Out” (much of it done while standing on raised surfboards), Connie Francis’s “Where the Boys Are,” Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual,” Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” Frankie Avalon’s “Venus” (recorded in 1959, which makes its inclusion anachronistic, although its black light effects are memorable), Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” (an antiwar song inexplicably staged as a romantic number), the Supremes’ “Lover’s Concerto,” Astrud Gilberto’s “The Girl from Ipanema,” and Andy Williams’s “Moon River,” presented against a beautiful background of an arched Japanese bridge surrounded by willows as a woman in a wedding gown hangs from a swing nearby. Your guess is as good as mine.

Joey Calveri, Tara Palsha, and company. Photo: Matt Murphy.

I could have lived without a couple of these numbers, even if they’d had better orchestrations, and the same was true of act two. The 60s, after all, was the Woodstock decade, but you won’t find anything here by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, the Grateful Dead, Joe Cocker, Janis Joplin, Richie Havens, or Joan Baez, to name just a few from that generation. There’s a 1963 Beatles number, “I Saw Her Standing There,” sung by Mr. Elder while standing, for some reason, outside a recruiting office in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, and we also hear Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” seriously damaged as sung by Mr. Miller, Mr. Elder, and Mr. Calveri dressed as GIs fighting in Viet Nam.

Company of TRIP OF LOVE. Photo: Matt Murphy.

There’s no Simon and Garfunkel on the bill, nor even the Beach Boys (certainly better than the Surfaris, for God’s sake), but there is, questionably, Sandy Nelson’s “Let There Be Drums.” Act two also presents the Fifth Dimension’s “Up, Up and Away” in which the performers sail off in a beautiful balloon (how clever!), Lesley Gore’ “You Don’t Own Me,” “Jimmy Ruffin’s “What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted,” the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’,” whose staging as an antiwar song had me scratching my head, Martha and the Vandellas’ “Nowhere to Run,” Neil Diamond’s “If You Go Away,” Petula Clark’s “Downtown” as well as her “Sign of the Times” (are two Clark numbers really necessary?), another Jefferson Airplane tune, “Somebody to Love,” Cher’s “The Way of Love,” and, during the finale, Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild," with, strangely, “Batman” bringing down the curtain.

Dionne Figgins and the company. Photo: Matt Murphy.

Although several numbers try to link their content to the context of contemporary events, each attempt is shallower than the other; some songs seem completely unconnected to their staging. This was the decade of widespread drug use, civil rights struggles, political assassinations, sexual freedom, Viet Nam, and so many other major issues. TRIP OF LOVE has a conceptual emptiness that only makes more vivid how great an opportunity was overlooked in giving the show historical relevance.

If you lived through the 60s, you’ll see at once how ersatz and cleaned up everything is, from Gregg Barnes’s unconvincing simulations of the period’s clothing to Josh Marquette’s wigs. This was, of course, the decade that gave us the hit musical HAIR, but not a single male performer sports the kind of lengthy tresses, or even facial growth, that helped define those flower power years. It's almost as if George Steinbrenner produced this show.

David Elder, Yesenia Ayala. Photo: Matt Murphy.

The walls of Stage 42 have been covered with hallucinogenic designs to make you feel TRIP OF LOVE is like a hippie-dippy trip. It's one trip, however, that you may find hard to love.

Tara Palsha, Kelly Felthous, Dionne Figgins. Photo: Matt Murphy.

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TRIP OF LOVE

Stage 42

422 West Forty-Second Street, NYC

Open run

85. Review: EMPANADA LOCA (seen October 21, 2015)

"A Dog Eat Dog, Man Eat Man World"

Stars range from 5-1.

Just before the start of EMPANADA LOCA, Aaron Mark’s bleak and grisly (or should that be gristly?) solo piece starring the exceptional Daphne Rubin-Vega, the deafening roar of a subway train shakes the rafters (Ryan Rumery did the sound). Then, from the blackness on the unlit stage, we hear a woman’s voice asking us who’s there, wondering if it’s a cop, claiming she can see like a cat and hear like a bat, and threatening to get whoever it is right between the eyes. Softening her tone, she adds, “I don’t wanna jump to any conclusions. I’m not that kind of person.”

Well, given the story she’s about to tell us, that personal assessment may not be very accurate; on the other hand, just what kind of person she is remains, like the performance itself, somewhat in the dark. One thing you can say for sure, though, is she’s a survivor. The woman, wearing a dark hoody, steps from the shadows, and turns on a hanging string of four or five naked lightbulbs, barely illuminating her living quarters deep in the bowels of the New York subway system. The person she’s speaking to is us, imagined as a fellow subterranean who’s somehow found her hiding spot, and to whom—presumably because of her need for human contact—she’s soon spilling her guts, in a manner of speaking, about how she came to be here.

Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo: Monique Carboni.

Mr. Mark, who also directed this Labyrinth Theater production, has written a challenging 95-minute monologue loosely inspired by the “legend of Sweeney Todd,” a story, of course, that goes back much further than Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 musical version.  With Halloween fast approaching, its timing couldn't be better. In Mr. Mark’s telling, Ms. Rubin-Vega is Dolores, who recounts her experiences from the time when, while studying city planning at Hunter College, she falls in love and moves in with Dominic, a guy in Washington Heights dealing weed. One thing leads to another, she’s arrested for possession with intent to sell and assault on a police officer, and sent to prison for 13 years. Dominic, meanwhile, disappears off the face of the earth.

Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo: Monique Carboni.

On her release she returns to her old Washington Heights haunts, now in the midst of gentrification. Unable to find Dominic, she’s taken in by Luis, who had a crush on her when he was a kid, and who runs his late father’s empanada shop with the help of a 16-year-old transsexual, Nellie. Hanging about is the wreck of a homeless man, with ruined skin and teeth, who will play a significant part in Dolores’s experiences.

To earn money, Dolores, who learned how to give massages while in prison, becomes an unlicensed masseuse, working out of Luis’s basement. When Jonah, the young Jewish landlord, threatens Luis with eviction, Dolores takes matters into her own hands, so to speak. Luis, discovering a body of new ingredients, uses them to make a tasty new recipe that has his “muy loco” empanadas flying off the shelf. But, as in the original story, a steady supply of meat is needed. From here on, the story concerns Dolores and Luis’s gruesome activities, their sexual encounters, and her ultimate need to seek refuge from the law, which leads to her life among the mole people in the city’s underbelly.

Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo: Monique Carboni.

Ms. Rubin-Vega, a two-time Tony nominee, tells her story on David Meyer’s grungy, barely visible set, so dimly lit by Bradley King that the actor’s cheekbones, especially when shrouded by the hoody, look as gaunt as those on Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” There’s very little movement, and much of the time she sits on the massage table that dominates the space. Speaking in a slightly gravelly voice, with a convincing street accent, she changes her voice for each of the people in the story, ranging fluently from one emotional level to the other, and giving the impression of a reasonable, well-meaning person who somehow got caught up in a world where certain actions were necessary and, no matter how horrible, had to be done with a minimum of fuss or regret. Her tale includes both unsettlingly gory images and crudely direct language about Luis’s sexual appetites, shall we say, all of it delivered as if what she's disclosing is no different from talking about what she did last summer.  

The events depicted in EMPANADA LOCA are exaggerated and improbable, but Mr. Mark’s super-colloquial, vulgarity-riddled language gives them the air of reality, an effect greatly amplified by Ms. Rubin-Vega’s totally committed, natural, and accessible performance.

Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo: Monique Carboni.

The weakest moments come at the very end, when something aiming to be shocking shifts the narrative from the storytelling mode, where events are seen in our imagination, to the actual; no matter how realistic it may seem, it’s impossible to avoid artificiality and, in this instance, the nervous laughter it inspires. Mr. Mark is off the mark here, and should rethink how he ends the play. Ms. Rubin-Vega’s artistry deserves it.

OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
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EMPANADA LOCA

Bank Street Theater

155 Bank Street, NYC

Through November 8

84. Review: ROTHSCHILD AND SONS (seen October 16, 2015)

"A Questionable Investment"

For my review of ROTHSCHILD AND SONS, please click on THE BROADWAY BLOG.

OTHER VIEWPOINTS:

DC Metro Theatre Arts'
NY Theatre Guide

ROTHSCHILD AND SONS

York Theatre Company/Theater at St. Peter's

619 Lexington Avenue, NYC

Through November 8

Glory Crampton, Robert Cuccioli. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

From left: Curtis Wiley, James LaVerdiere, Christopher M. Williams, Mark Pinter. Photo:Carol Rosegg.

From left: Curtis Wiley, Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, Glory Crampton, James LaVerdiere, David Bryan Johnson.  Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Glory Crampton, Peter Cormican, Robert Cuccioli. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

James Laverdier, Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, David Bryan Johnson, Robert Cuccioli, Curtis Wiley, Christopher M. Williams.. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Curtis Wiley, Christopher M. Williams, David Bryan Johnson, Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, James LaVerdiere, Glory Crampton. Photo: Carol Rossegg.

Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, James LaVerdier, Curtis Wiley, Christopher M. Williams, Peter Cormican, Jonathan Hadley, David Bryan Johnson.. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

David Bryan Johnson, Christopher M. Williams, Robert Cuccioli, Curtis Wiley, Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, James LaVerdiere. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Curtis Wiley, James LaVerdiere, Christopher M. Williams, Glory Crampton, Robert Cuccioli, Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, David Bryan Johnson. Photo: Carol Rosegg

83. Review: THE GIN GAME (seen October 16, 2015)

“Battle of the Aged”

Stars range from 5-1.

 Ladies and gentlemen! In this corner, weighing—well, let’s just say a lot more than 200 pounds—the heavyweight, James Earl Jones! And in this corner, weighing perhaps 100 pounds or less, the atomweight, Cicely Tyson! But don’t let their relative sizes fool you. Her frame may be slight but Ms. Tyson (like someone else with that name) can slug it out with the biggest and best of them. She does just that in going up against her hefty opponent in this charming Broadway revival of THE GIN GAME, D.L. Coburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1977 dramatic comedy about the anguish of growing old, alone and forgotten.

 

These two shining jewels of the histrionic profession (he’s 84, she’s nearly 91)—playing roles originated by Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy and covered in the 1997 Broadway revival by Julie Harris and Charles Durning—engage in a relentless battle of the aged in the roles of Weller Martin and Fonsia Dorsey, divorced and lonely geriatrics at a rundown nursing home, where life has treated them much the same as the discarded junk accumulating on the facility’s back porch. But the dormant juice of life starts coursing through their brittle bones as they become combative frenemies after Weller engages Fonsia, a new arrival, in a series of increasingly competitive gin rummy games that turn their budding friendship into a battle royale of spiteful taunts.

Weller considers himself a masterful player, while Fonsia claims to barely remember the game’s rudiments; as soon as they start playing, however, she shows an uncanny knack for winning that drives Weller crazy, bringing out all his combative, curmudgeonly tendencies, a clear result of life’s setbacks. As he grows ever more frustrated, he interrupts Fonsia’s attempts at communication by counting out the cards for the next hand with barely concealed contempt. When he finally wins, he won’t accept it, convinced she threw the game.

Weller doesn’t restrict their rivalry to the card table, and the play becomes a constantly shifting ballet of feints and jabs at each other’s psyches, with many a painful blow landing squarely But Fonsia and Weller’s subdued affection for one another comes out during a tender foxtrot they dance as music is heard wafting from inside; they begin by standing apart from one another while holding hands, draw closer into a more conventional position, and make your heart leap when Fonsia puts both arms around Weller’s neck, only for the spell to be broken when Weller’s legs can’t sustain the moment.

For all the powerful personal attacks, and the threat of physical ones as well, the play bounces from one funny line to another, keeping the pathos largely at bay (not necessarily the wisest choice) until the end as the laughs come marching in. And there’s plenty to be sad about, since both characters share the loneliness of elderly parents whose children no longer wish to have anything to do with them.

Jones, with his bulky frame, basso profundo voice, and dominating aura is perfect as Weller, a cantankerous, depressed, but decent man who once ran a successful business but has ended up in a shabby residence where he has nothing in common with the residents, half of whom he derides as catatonic.

The nonagenarian Ms. Tyson, playing a woman at least a decade younger than herself, ironically has to act old age by shuffling about in her slippers, when, remarkably, she seems not that far removed from her spring chicken days. She balances Jones’s ranting with her lighter, more cunning touch, playing Fonsia with a wide array of subtle touches, zinging one-liners with perfect timing, being frightened when Weller rages, twisting the knife just so when she sees an opening, and suggesting pools of emotion when her private life is discussed.

Despite it being obvious that Weller and Fonsia need each other, Mr. Coburn finds myriad obstacles to their realizing this; his plotline may be thin, some of his material may seem repetitive, he could trim the running time a bit, and his ending isn’t entirely satisfactory, but the playwright’s skill at keeping the dramatic ball in the air as the characters work out their issues keeps the audience sharply focused over the course of two acts and nearly two hours. Like it or not, that alone makes a visit worthwhile.

Some who’d seen the production before I got to it thought its pace slow and its actors still not comfortable with their lines, but what I saw was fully charged, its pacing as brisk as it had to be, and its actors parrying lines with not a nuance left uncovered. Much credit to Leonard Foglia for his loving direction.

THE GIN GAME is the kind of two-hander that, with actors of Jones and Tyson’s stature, could be played to equal effect in a bare room with nothing but a few chairs and a card table. This is Broadway, though, so Riccardo Hernandez (who also did the spot on costumes) has provided the weathered side of a multi-storied old folks' home, with a substantial porch roof, and an impressive pile of junk. When it rains, we get seat-shaking peals of thunder (sound by David Van Tieghem), torrents of rain, and lightning courtesy of the combined brilliance of lighting icons Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, whose touches throughout are continually superb.

One can say of this production what Fonsia so often announces when she has a winning hand: “Gin!”

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Show-Score

THE GIN GAME

John Golden Theatre

252 West Forty-Fifth Street, NYC

Through January 10

82. Review: PERFECT ARRANGEMENT (seen October 14, 2015)

“Lying at State”

Stars range from 5-1.

Most film and theatre treatments of the political witch hunts of the 1950s focus on Senator Joseph McCarthy’s attempts to root out communists in American government and society. Topher Payne’s interesting, amusing, but imperfect play, PERFECT ARRANGEMENT, first seen at CulturalDC’s 2013 Source Festival in Washington, D.C., and produced here by Primary Stages, takes a different tack. It examines an area of McCarthyism that has been practically untouched in mainstream cinematic and theatrical circles—the persecution of homosexual employees of the U.S. State Department.

From left: Julia Coffey, Christopher J. Hanke, Jennifer Van Dyck, Kevin O'Rourke, Robert Eli, Mikaela Feely-Lehman. Photo: Carol Rosegg. 

A bit of history: starting in 1950, a significant part of McCarthy’s investigations involved the purging of homosexuals employed by the Department of State, a practice that had been carried on within the department itself since 1947. By 1950, 91 people had been dismissed, their transgressions vaguely defined with such phrases as “moral weakness.” On February 28, 1950, however, Deputy Under Secretary for Administration John Peurifoy reluctantly admitted at a Senate hearing that the reason was their homosexuality. This revelation led to increased pressure on the State Department to rid itself of gays and lesbians because their sexuality was believed to make them security risks. In 1950, 54 suspected homosexuals were fired, and by 1953 hundreds more had lost their jobs, often with barely any evidence to support the charges. Eventually, more people were fired for their alleged homosexuality than because of their leftist leanings. The title of David K. Johnson’s 2004 book on the subject, The Lavender Scare, mirrors the better known “Red scare” and derives from early 1950s references to gays as “lavender lads.” A 2013 documentary was based on Johnson’s book.

Julia Coffey, Kelly McAndrew, Jennifer Van Dyck. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

The action of PERFECT ARRANGEMENT is set in the Georgetown living room (designed by Neil Patel) of a young couple, Bob (Robert Eli), a State Department employee, and Milly Martindale (Mikaela Feely-Lehmann); it’s a huge, square, sparsely decorated, blandly unattractive space, with beige walls interrupted by fieldstone sections, an upstage closet, a large, curtained window at left, and doorways to the hall and kitchen at right. The setting cleverly manages to look both real and phony at the same time.

Robert Eli, Mikael Feely-Lehmann. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

The title refers to the setup the Martindales have created with the Baxters, who live next door (that closet is more than metaphorical). Jim Baxter (Christopher J. Hanke), a school teacher, is married to Norma (Julia Coffey), a secretary at State who works in Bob’s office. Jim's actually Bob’s lover, while Norma and Millie are similarly involved; their marriages are a front to cover their “deviant” sexuality. The play begins with a cocktail party at the Martindales’ where we meet the two couples, as well as Bob and Norma’s boss, a blustery, middle-aged, homophobic bureaucrat, Theodore Sunderson (Kevin O’Rourke), who’s married to Kitty (Jennifer Van Dyck), an airhead refugee from a 1950s TV sitcom (think of a certain redhead). To the Sundersons and everyone else, the Martindales and Baxters look like ordinary straight couples.

Christopher J. Hanke, Robert Eli. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Trouble begins brewing when Bob, who’s been uncovering commie employees for State, is ordered by Sunderson to do the same for gays. He’s willing to do what he must to protect his perfect arrangement, but Norma feels increasingly uncomfortable as she watches those who've been let go pass her desk. The pressure grows more intense under Sunderson’s scrutiny, and a wrench is thrown into the works by a decision to move Barbara Grant (Kelly McAndrew), a translator with an unapologetic appetite for sex in every flavor, from her job overseas back to Washington because of a complaint about her bedroom activities. Will she be fired? And how will she react? How long can the Baxters and Martindales sustain their crumbling masquerade? And what are their alternatives? Tune in at the Duke and see.

Christopher J. Hanke, Julia Coffey. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

The LGBT community is still fighting for complete acceptance into the fabric of American society, but when you consider the difference between the world depicted in PERFECT ARRANGEMENT and one in which members of Congress are openly gay and in which gay marriage is the law of the land, you realize how much progress has been made over the past 65 years. The setup in Mr. Payne’s play is an excellent one for expressing the fears and pressures gay people, especially those in government, faced in 1950, and the notion of telling the story within the mode of a sitcom has real potential. Moreover, Bob's ethical problem of how to maintain his integrity when forced to act so inhumanely is powerful; it brings to mind the behavior of those Nazis who explained their actions by saying they were only following orders. 

Unfortunately, though, the writing and direction (by Michael Barakiva) diffuse much of the impact by hitting too hard, placing a distracting emphasis on broad, sometimes farcical comedy that's not funny enough to sustain itself and begins to feel strained within this dramatic world. It generates a few good laughs, but, for the most part, cheats the characters of reality, making them seem like abstractions whose problems may be real but with whom it’s hard to identify. When things darken, and the burden of secrets and lies becomes unbearable, the shift into melodrama is uncomfortable, serving only to accentuate the sense of artificiality. Equally artificial is the play's resolution, which ties things up neatly but is highly unlikely to have happened in 1950.

Julia Coffey, Mikaela Feely-Lehmann. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

A great deal of attention has been paid by costume designer Jennifer Caprio to the women’s clothing; having everyone constantly dressed like a Vogue fashion plate, however, seems a bit heavy-handed. Less care has been taken with the authenticity of most Jim and Bob’s clothes, which—among other things—seem far too formfitting for 1950.

Jennifer Van Dyck, Kevin O'Rourkie. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

The acting comes on like gangbusters, but in some cases provides histrionic cannons when rifles would be best. Ms. Van Dyck’s Kitty is probably the most obvious example of this tendency though she’s a good enough actress to make even her cartoonish performance enjoyable. Kitty, by the way, has a secret of her own, which deepens her character but isn't consistent with her behavior. The standout is Ms. McAndrew’s sassy and sophisticated Barbara, who gets an emotionally satisfying if historically questionable curtain speech that would be the show’s 11 o’clock number if this were a musical.

Kelly McAndrfew, Julia Coffey. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

There are a number of minor imperfections that could easily be fixed. The night I saw the play, a character made a dramatic exit without her bag, which, in the context, made no sense, (The script says she takes her bag, so one hopes this was simply the actress's error, not a conscious choice.) There's much to admire in PERFECT ARRANGEMENT, even in a muddled presentation, and I suspect it will find a ready audience. 

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PERFECT ARRANGEMENT

The Duke on 42nd Street

229 West Forty-Second Street, NYC

Through November 6