THE TREASURER: Narcissistic Mom and Enabling Son Lock Horns in Intriguing New Play

The Treasurer

Even before the lights go down at the beginning of The Treasurer, Max Posner's modern parable of a play at Playwright's Horizons, the unnamed man (Peter Friedman) standing before us lets us know that "sometime in the future, I will be in hell." Take him at his word. He means this literally. And, indeed, by the end of the evening he will be on his way there. Literally.   

And what is his crime, you might ask.  What has he done, or what is he planning to do that will lead to eternal damnation? It's not hard to conjure up any manner of heinous deeds that would qualify, but the thing that the man is beating himself up for harkens all the way back to the Ten Commandments, specifically Commandment #5.

You don't need to look it up. That would be the one that tells us to "honor your father and your mother." But this man, referred to in the play only as "The Son," just can't bring himself to do it, even if it is a matter of saving his immortal soul. Not when it comes to his aging mother, that charmer (and she can be very charming), Ida Armstrong, deliciously portrayed by Deanna Dunagan, who will forever be remembered for her breathtaking (and Tony-winning) portrayal of the monstrous mother in August: Osage County.  

Production photos by Joan Marcus. 

Here she is a different sort of monster. She's not a domineering and controlling gorgon, although the impact on her middle-aged son is the same as if she were. Instead, she is, as he says of her, "the definition of delusional."

Make that narcissistic, manipulative, and delusional. 

Ida's delusion is not all that uncommon. She lives well beyond her means, and she intends to keep on doing so, long after she has gone through her first husband's money, her second husband's money, and her own money. She fully expects her sons (there are three of them) to keep her in the manner of spoiled royalty that she has been accustomed to.


It falls on the youngest son, the one played by Mr. Friedman,  to be the designated "treasurer," the one who is supposed to pay the bills and monitor Mom's spending; the others (nicely portrayed by Marinda Anderson and Pun Bandhu, who also tackle several other roles) are too intimidated to deal with her. 

On the face of it,  what we have here is that well-known combination of user and enabler. Throughout the play, we observe Mr. Friedman's character talking to Ida - almost exclusively by phone, since, as he says, his tolerance for being around her extends for no more than "two to three minutes." Mostly he is short and snarly, throwing fits about the way she runs up bills, and then - feeling guilty (and Ida is expert at guilt-inducing martyrdom) - grudgingly capitulating to her every whim.  

Yet the playwright, the performers, and director David Cromer manage to take this familiar situation into intriguing directions that leave us uncertain as to where our sympathies lie. Surprisingly, Ida herself seems reasonably gracious as she accepts that she needs to go into a retirement home (insisting, of course, that it be the nicest one, requiring an upfront payment of $250,000, plus $2,500 a month that she does not have). We also see her interacting pleasantly with store clerks, including one who wants to sell her a pair of $700 pillows, and chatting on the phone with a caller seeking a donation for the local orchestra.  

You can't help but think to yourself that this is an easily conned older woman who needs someone to watch out for her interests. She doesn't seem to be able to say no, and neither can her son, as she blithely drains her bank accounts and his.  

We never really know the source of the son's resentment, what it was like growing up with Ida as a mother. You can only take him at his word when he tells us, "I will be in hell because I don't love my mother. I want her to die."  

It all sounds rather bleak, but thanks to these master actors and a director with an eye for detail, The Treasurer is a fascinating study of how apron strings can become a choking garrote. The son can only show his bitterness in little ways, by badmouthing his mother to others, replacing an expensive mirror with a cheap one from Amazon, or glaring at her over the one lunch we see them having together at an Asian restaurant, where he blithely uses chopsticks while Ida, who is slowly sinking into dementia, is compelled to eat with her fingers. 

In the end, an epilogue that has the son riding in a descending elevator to that long-anticipated hell, we are left to consider who has been responsible for all the little murders we have been witness to: the narcissistic user or the resentful enabler?      

  
Feel free to share this blog with your friends, and to offer up your own theater stories by posting a comment. I also invite you to check out the website Show-Score.Com, where you will find capsule reviews of current plays from Yours Truly and many other New York critics.

The 2012 Tonys and the Business Side of Broadway

It’s all Irving Berlins’ fault.

Berlin penned the quintessential tribute to the theater world when he wrote “There’s no business like SHOW business” for Annie Get Your Gun—emphasizing, as he did, the creative and artistic side of the industry. 

It’s a rousing tune, an ode to all of those wonderful theater folks who wouldn’t trade even a moment of their onstage lives for a sack of gold. 

Yet perhaps what Berlin should have written is, “There’s no BUSINESS like show BUSINESS,” with an emphasis that would be more appropriate to the economics of Broadway. 

This was, after all, the year of the official opening of Spider-Man:  Turn Off The Dark, with its $75 million tab; the year of premium ticket prices closing in on $500 (The Book of Mormon); and the two-character, 90-minute Venus in Fur happily selling regular tickets at $176.50 a pop in order to cash in on Nina Arianda’s Tony Award. 

I don’t mean to harp on these examples, and, frankly, I’m not sure I begrudge any of this.  There are, after all, bills to be paid, and the money has to come from somewhere.  To quote Stephen Sondheim from Merrily We Roll Along:

                        Did I say money?

     No, I like money a lot

     I mean it’s better than not

What I want to talk about is the 2012 Tony Awards Show, which, in my view, crossed the line separating entertainment (or even entertainment with an eye toward attracting audiences to Broadway theater) from unadulterated commercialism.

As entertainment, it began promisingly enough, with host Neil Patrick Harris singing the charming opening number (written by David Javerbaum and David Schlesinger):

                        If life were more like theater,

                        Life wouldn’t suck so much

What ardent theatergoer could fail to embrace that sentiment?

After that, though, the commercialism became more and more obvious, and ate up an awful lot of air time that could have been used to highlight the nominees. 

Most egregious was the nearly four-minute infomercial for Royal Caribbean, featuring Harvey Fierstein in the embarrassing role of pitchman. That bit of mammonism was more off-putting than Audra McDonald’s rape joke or the oddity of featuring a number from Evita, and giving its star and title character half a line to sing (all the better to feature Ricky Martin). 

There were other questionable moments that could be viewed as being tied more to money than to art.  For instance, was it really necessary to feature a song from The Book of Mormon, last year’s big winner and a show that is still fighting back the crowds happy to plunk down $954 for a pair of premium tickets?   

And was the show officially titled The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess truly the best revival of a musical, or did the potential for touring and future licensing fees influence the decision to select it over the now-closed and too-expensive-to-tour production of Follies? 

But, really, these are quibbles next to allowing Royal Caribbean, a major sponsor of the show, to promote their at-sea production of Hairspray as part of the evening’s entertainment. Couldn’t they have been given a commercial slot instead? 

I’m still rolling my eyes…but what do I know?

In any event, theater is not just about Broadway.  There are dozens of wonderful not-for-profit Off-Broadway and Off Off-Broadway companies that do an amazing job of presenting top-notch, professional plays and musicals on a shoestring budget and offering them at very affordable prices to audiences for revivals and original works by some of the best and brightest playwrights around. 

One of these companies is Playwrights Horizons, where its latest production, Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn is drawing very positive reviews and word-of-mouth.  (I reviewed it on May 27 in this blog, if you are interested.)

Playwrights Horizons is in the midst of a fund-raising venture, which you can support without laying out a dime by “LIKING” them on Facebook by June 30.  Ten thousand “likes” will earn them a donation of $10,000—chump change within the moneyed world of Broadway, but a healthy infusion of cash in the not-for-profit world.  

To sweeten the deal, while you are taking the time to “LIKE” them,  you can enter to win a $250 gift certificate from The Apple Store. Why not do it now?  Here’s the link:  http://www.facebook.com/PlaywrightsHorizons.

Feel free to tell your friends about this blog, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment.  And if you can't get enough of ProfMiller, check out his column, ProfMiller@The Theater, at BroadwayShowBiz.com.

'Assistance': What Won't We Do to Inch Up the Ladder of Success?

Virginia Kull and Michael Esper.  Photo by Joan Marcus



Imagine what it would be like if your boss were truly the megalomaniac you think he is.

That is Daniel, the never-seen but always-present world class monster who rules his universe with an iron fist in Assistance, Leslye Headland’s sharply sardonic and scarily funny take on life in the fast lane, being given a near-flawless production at Playwrights Horizons under the keen eye of director Trip Cullman.

Lord knows how Daniel—who has all of the charm of Violet Weston in August:  Osage County and the self-absorption of Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada—became so successful at whatever it is he does (we’re never told, but a guess would be that he is a major player in the entertainment industry).  He apparently cannot tie his own shoelaces without the help of an endless parade of personal assistants whom he badgers, goads, humiliates, and tosses away like so many used tissues.

Assistance takes place in Daniel’s headquarters office, where a steady stream of ambitious wannabes play musical chairs among the three desks, tied to their computers and telephones like so many air traffic controllers at the world’s busiest airport.   

These bright, young, self-assured success seekers are like those knights lined up in the fairy tales, where the prize of the princess’s hand in marriage and half the kingdom is up for grabs to the one who can solve the riddle or slay the dragon.  Never mind that the road leading up to the castle is strewn with dead bodies; each is convinced he or she has what it takes to win it all.

It’s hard to know why they stay, what with the low wages, long hours, and constant abuse, but working for Daniel seems to be a great step up the career ladder for the young and ambitious—if conflicted—staffers.   As one of them puts it:  “I hate it here, and I don’t want to leave!”

The play opens with Nick (Michael Esper) and Vince (Lucas Near-Verbrugghe) taking phone calls and trading banter like computer wonk buddies at one of those Silicon Valley enclaves.  Vince is delighted to have won his exit pass, a move “across the hall” to some sort of managerial position away from the direct clutches of Daniel.  Nick’s goal, says Vince, should be the same as his was, to find someone who can do the first assistant’s job better than you, so that you will be transferred out.

So Vince moves out, Nick moves up, and in comes Nora (Virginia Kull), whose own personal goal is to be so successful that one day she can take Daniel’s place. 

Nick and Nora form a survival/romantic bond of sorts, and they are joined by three others as the play progresses: Heather (Sue Jean Kim), whose raison d'être is making her parents proud of her; Justin (Bobby Steggert), who lives to make excuses for Daniel’s heinous behavior and hopes he will someday actually please the boss; and Jenny (Amy Rosoff), a cool-as-a-cucumber multi-tasker whom nothing seems to faze. 

There is no through plot in a conventional sense, but there is an inevitable arc to the action, as each character either finds or is pushed through an exit.  And there are few qualms about shoving any of the others under the bus in order to hang on for one more day.   

The vibe is hyperkinetic as things are set spinning out of control.  We can imagine the characters living on triple-shot espressos, energy drinks, and alertness drugs as they work unceasingly to make sure the Great One’s needs are met, no matter the sacrifice.

The dialog throughout is sharp and clever, and presented with rapid-fire flair by a very talented cast indeed.  Mr. Esper, in particular, is magnetic as the always hopeful Nick, expecting at any moment to follow his buddy Vince to that wonderful land “across the hall.”  But all of the others have their moment in the spotlight, and Ms. Rosoff takes it on home at the end with a most magnificent breakdown, for which she and the director must share the credit with the set designer David Korins and choreographer (yes, I said choreographer) Jeffry Denman. 

I have long admired Playwright Horizon’s commitment to nurturing and providing a showcase for new or relatively new playwrights. Assistance joins the winner’s circle with such recent gems as Bathsheba Doran’s Kin, Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation, and Adam Bock’s A Small Fire.    

Playwright’s Horizons is offering discount tickets on orders placed by February 21:

Use the code HELPMEBLOG
$40 (reg. $70) for all performances through Feb. 19

$50 (reg. $70) for all other performances Feb 21-Mar 11

Online  http://goo.gl/ZY7ks
Call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 Noon to 8PM daily
In Person: Ticket Central Box Office, 416 W. 42nd Street between 9^th & 10^th Avenues

30&Under Party February 16 following the performance
All non-member tickets $25.  Use code PARTY.  Proof of age required at door.
Order at http://goo.gl/DpR5m


Feel free to tell your friends about this blog, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment.

Kin: A Sharp and Funny Look at Friends and Family

Sam Gold, Kristen Bush, Bathsheba Doran, & Patch Darragh. 

If I were to have a play of my own produced, I can’t think of a an organization I’d rather have behind me than Playwrights Horizons, with its stated mission of supporting and developing contemporary American playwrights—a mission it lives up to consistently and with great results. 

This season alone has given us such lovely little gems as Amy Herzog’s After the Revolution, and Adam Bock’s A Small Fire, both of which I have written about previously.  Now we have Kin, a new play by Bathsheba Doran, which is so clearly a labor of love for all concerned.  

Ms. Doran, who also writes for television, has several plays to her credit and has garnered a number of playwriting awards, although, to judge by published reviews (I’ve not seen any of her previous work), she has not always been wildly embraced by the critics.  

However, I predict a more enthusiastic response to Kin, a sharp and funny riff on the theme of “boy meets girl” that is being performed by a strong ensemble cast—beautifully directed by Sam Gold, a rising star who continues to bring out the best in the productions he is associated with (Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation and The Aliens, and Kim Rosenstock’s Tigers Be Still, to mention but a few of his recent successes).

Kin tells the story of Anna, an Ivy League English lit professor, who becomes romantically involved with Sean, an Irish immigrant who works as a personal trainer.  The pair, well-acted by Kristen Bush and Patch Darragh (“Tom” in Roundabout’s wonderful production of A Glass Menagerie last season), come together, drift apart, and reunite over the course of the play. 

Ms. Doran weaves a tapestry out of short scenes involving the pair and various members of their intersecting and growing circle of friends and family, of which there are perhaps a few more than the weave of the plot can comfortably carry.  At times, I felt as though I were watching one of a series of plays, and that—over time—each of the characters would take turns being the central character. Who knows?  Maybe this is what the playwright has in mind. 

If that is so, at least two of them deserve plays of their own.  One is Anna’s neurotic actress friend Helena who keeps popping in and out of Anna's life.  As portrayed by Laura Heisler, Helena is both wacky-funny and a little scary.  If a scene involving a bear and a hunter seems to have been dropped into Kin from some other play altogether, it is also very much in keeping with the character. 

The other deeply compelling role is that of Linda, Sean’s agoraphobic mother back in Ireland.  Richly portrayed by Suzanne Bertish, Linda is given a powerful and moving back-story, so that when she emerges from her home for the first time in decades, it becomes a momentous occasion.

Director Gold manages all of the intersecting storylines with great skill, aided splendidly by scenic designer Paul Steinberg, who keeps the many scene changes moving at a rapid pace and throws in at least one surprising touch that takes a common theatrical device and pushes it over the top to hilarious results.

Given Ms. Doran’s increasing visibility as a television writer, the playwright may decide that Hollywood is where her future lies.  If that’s the case, I would encourage her to keep the characters she has so lovingly introduced in Kin and further develop them for a wider audience.  And while she is at it, I hope she continues to find time for writing for the theater.  Perhaps an Obie or two would provide the impetus to keep her coming back to New York. 

Feel free to tell your friends about this blog, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment.

A Small Fire: A Lesson in Loss and Gain

Michele Pawk and Reed Birney

It’s unsettling to be a woman on Broadway these days.

No, I’m not referring to the announcement that Natalie Mendoza, a lead actress in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, is leaving the show after suffering a concussion during the troubled musical’s first preview performance.

Rather, I am thinking of the spate of current shows, both on and off Broadway, depicting women suffering from any number of mental and physical illnesses. To name a few that come to mind, there’s treatment-resistant bipolar disorder in Next to Normal; post-coma trauma in A Kind of Alaska; Valium addiction and loss of self in Angels in America, and a lengthy stint in a mental institution in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

Now we have a new play to add to the list—A Small Fire, written by Adam Bock, and directed by Trip Cullman, currently in previews at Playwrights Horizons.

Michele Pawk, a versatile musical and dramatic actress, gives a sharp-elbowed yet ultimately moving performance as Emily Bridges, a fiercely independent tough-as-nails building contractor who is stricken by a cascading series of physical losses that force her into what she considers to be a most humiliating position of having to depend on others.

The first sign of trouble occurs when Emily is unable to smell the smoke from a burning napkin that has caught fire after she has accidentally left the stove on. Emily’s long-suffering husband John (well-acted by the estimable Reed Birney) teases her about her absent-mindedness, until they both find out that Emily has a very real disease, of unknown origin or treatment, that quickly spreads from the loss of smell to a loss of taste, and later, of sight and of hearing.

The core of the plot focuses on Emily’s reaction to these losses, and the extent to which she is able or unable to accept them as her world closes in on her.

All of this would be merely an intellectual exercise if the playwright hadn’t been able to find the emotional core as well, and, compellingly and winningly, A Small Fire is as much about personal relationships as it is a medical mystery.

More specifically, it is about a marriage that has held together through many years, however mismatched the couple may seem to the outside world. Emily and John clearly have a history that binds them together, even if their daughter Jenny (played with just the right amount of twenty-something ego-centrism by Celia Keenan-Bolger) finds her mother to be difficult, rude, and distant, and frequently wonders aloud why her gentle father stays with Emily.

The cast is rounded out by Victor Williams as Billy, Emily’s right-hand man in her construction business. Emily and Billy share an ease of familiarity as well as their own history—strictly platonic, in case you were wondering—that she does not have with her own family. Their friendship, while perhaps a little shoehorned into the play as a whole, allows us to see another side of Emily.

All told, Adam Bock has shaped a solid play about a woman and a family in crisis. We do worry about Emily as she faces an inner struggle about her own future—a struggle that, to Mr. Bock’s credit and in keeping with Emily’s reticence, is never spoken of directly but which we nevertheless understand she is going through until the very end.

Feel free to tell your friends about this blog, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment.

After the Revolution Comes the Revelation: Then What Do We Do?

More than 50 years after his death, Joseph McCarthy, the late and little-lamented “junior Senator from Wisconsin,” has taken to haunting the New York theater scene.

The malignant spirit of the one-time powerful Senator, who ruined lives and careers by leveling charges of espionage and subversive activities during a reign of anti-Communist fervor in the 1950s, is evoked in no fewer than four current productions: Zero Hour, the one-man show about actor Zero Mostel; the revival of Tony Kushner’s masterwork, Angels in America; a production of Personal Enemy, an early play by John Osborne and Anthony Creighton, and the New York premiere of a play by Amy Herzog, called After the Revolution.

Herzog is one of the young playwrights I have written about, like Annie Baker, Ellen Fairey, and Kristoffer Diaz, who are bringing original voices and ideas to the theater scene and whose work speaks to a broad audience beyond their own same-age peers. After the Revolution, a play about three generations of American leftists, is being given a stellar production at the Playwrights Horizons, thanks in large part to a strong ensemble of actors, including the always-marvelous Lois Smith, who celebrated her “big eight-o” earlier this month, as the matriarch of the clan, and the always-marvelous David Margulies as an old family friend. It is worth the price of admission just to be able to watch these two veterans remind us what stage acting is all about.

In After the Revolution, the central character is Emma (Katharine Powell), who, in her mid-twenties, represents the third generation in her family of proud Marxist-inspired Americans. As “keeper of the flame” and head of a foundation named for her much-revered grandfather—iconicized as one of McCarthy’s targets—Emma is forced to confront some uncomfortable truths about the past and come to terms with her loving but manipulative father (Peter Friedman).

Emma is dedicated, like the rest of her family (save for some for some sneered-upon cousins), to supporting leftist causes. Indeed, the foundation she helms is engaged in a campaign on behalf of a very real death-row inmate, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who remains at the center of an ongoing debate over the fairness of his trial and of the death penalty itself.

Unfortunately, Emma’s personal angst as she strives to find her own place in the grand scheme of things tends to overwhelm what could be a very interesting debate on politics and social justice—something that would surely resonate in today’s political climate. It’s not that the family drama isn’t interesting; it is. I just longed for more of that good old radical, progressive, leftist talk, most of which is left up to Ms. Smith’s character to espouse; for instance, I found her unchallenged take on Stalin to be one of the most telling moments in the play.

Still there is much to commend. Director Carolyn Cantor has shaped the company into a cohesive and believable family unit. In addition to the fine performances by the actors identified above, Mare Winningham, as Emma’s stepmother, does an excellent job treading the line as mediator between the stubborn father-daughter pair.

Seeing After the Revolution, which Herzog has said was inspired by events in her own family, makes me hope that she will come back to this story one day and examine more deeply the complexities of the era that allowed for Joseph McCarthy to shake up so many lives, so that we are still feeling the impact today.

Feel free to tell your friends about this blog, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment.

Free and Discounted Tickets and a Call for Submissions

Free Theater Tickets

Theaters around the country are currently participating in an event in which they are giving away free tickets--no catch.

If you are interested, check out www.freenightoftheater.net. If you don't see anything you want--or if what you want is already sold out--check again later, tomorrow, or over the next couple of weeks. New performances are added pretty much daily.

Or take a chance on a less familiar play or venue. It's got to be worth at least the price of admission!

Discounted Tickets

Websites like Playbill.com, Theatermania.com and Broadwaybox.com offer access to discounted New York theater tickets to the general public—no membership fees involved.

Sometimes theaters themselves provide these discounts directly through last-minute “rush” sales to students or to the general public, through lotteries, or during previews while a show is still working out the kinks.

Case in point: Playwrights Horizons, in its fifth decade as “home to new American theater,” currently is offering discounted tickets for the New York premiere of After The Revolution, a new play about a family confronting secrets of the past, written by Amy Herzog. You can read more about the play at the Playwrights Horizons website: www.playwrightshorizons.org.

If you are intrigued, Playwrights Horizons has approached me about letting readers know about its discounted ticket policy, and, as a fan of the organization’s work, I am happy to oblige.

Order by November 9 with code ARGR and tickets are only:

$40* (reg. $55) for the first week of performances Oct. 21 – Oct. 28

$45 (reg. $55) for all performances Oct. 29 – Nov. 28

HOW TO ORDER:

Order online at www.playwrightshorizons.org. Use code APGR.

Call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 (Noon-8pm daily)

Present a printout of this blog post to the Ticket Central box office at 416 West 42nd Street (Noon-8pm daily).

*A limited number of $40 discounted tickets will be available for purchase. Subject to availability. Valid only in select rows.

Open Submissions for 10-minute Plays

Here is an exciting opportunity for aspiring or active playwrights.

Red Bull Theater has announced that it is seeking new 10-minute plays for its spring short play reading day.

New plays of no more than 10 pages, written in heightened language, in verse, with classic themes, adaptations of classics, or that otherwise fit the company’s mission and history are welcome.

Visit www.redbulltheater.com/Collaborate for details.

I'll post progress reports on my own efforts as we approach the deadline in December.

Feel free to tell your friends about this blog, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment.