The Aliens: A Gem of a Play by One Gem of a Playwright

If you saw and enjoyed Circle Mirror Transformation earlier this year, you know that the theater world has been granted the gift of an exceptional writer in Annie Baker, and that Baker herself is, likewise, well served by director Sam Gold.

The pair have teamed up to give us Baker's latest play, The Aliens, now at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. And once again, we are privileged with a gem of a play by a gem of a playwright.

Granted, the plot could fit into a thimble, and the play, as was true of Circle Mirror Transformation, reveals itself in short scenes and blackouts. But these do serve the purpose of providing a frame for a trio of misfits--two slackers and a dork, to use some stereotypic shorthand--who come totally and believably to life through their interactions with one another as they hang out in back of a coffee house (great set design, by the way, done by Andrew Lieberman).

Baker has an ear for authentic dialog that is amazing. One can imagine her perpetually eavesdropping on conversations and writing down every word and nuance, before turning them into dialog for her plays. She also cares enough about her characters to trust them to find the words to express themselves. Indeed, one word--in this case, the word "ladder"--can be full of meaning, as it reveals much about one of the characters. Even their hesitations are significant--not Pinteresque pauses, but human moments of awkwardness that arise as they do in life.

The cast of three--Michael Chernus, Dane DeHaan, and Erin Gann--create engagingly authentic characters, under Gold's gentle and supportive direction. As an added bonus, the play is punctuated with several charmingly goofy songs--reminiscent of something by the group They Might Be Giants--that were penned by Chernus, Gann, and actor Patch Darragh, now starring as "Tom" in The Glass Menagerie.

If you want theater that is full of bombast, smoke, and mirrors, then you might prefer something like the current production of Enron. If, however, you long for theater that expresses a real love of language, and that offers up well-drawn characters that were created with compassion and affection, then by all means make it a point to see The Aliens.

And while you are at it, do keep an eye on Ms. Baker as she continues to grow as a playwright. I can't wait to see what she comes up with next!

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I Never Sang For My Father: A Gift from a Master of Language

“Death ends a life, but not a relationship.”

I jotted down this quote on my program while viewing the Keen Company’s poignant revival of Robert Anderson’s I Never Sang For My Father, starring and with strong performances by Matt Servitto as the middle-aged “dutiful son,” and Keir Dullea and Marsha Mason as his elderly parents.

The quote captures the theme so well that when I later went back and read The New York Times reviews of the current production and the original one from 1968, both critics included the line in their remarks.

I had never seen the play before, but I was enthralled by the beautiful writing. Anderson creates dialog that allows the characters to reveal themselves and their relationships with one another through their verbal interactions. He also displays a real mastery of the sounds of the English language; he had me early on by having one of the characters utter the phrase “frowzy dowagers.” All right, maybe this isn’t the best example of “genuine dialog,” but don’t you just love the assonance?

The storyline itself is a familiar one—a son trying to connect with his self-centered, cold, and possibly abusive, father. Perhaps it was that familiarity that led Clive Barnes, in his review of the original production, to brush off the play as sentimental claptrap. Or perhaps it was because it was the 1960s, a time of experimental avant-gardism, and Anderson’s work was seen as too old fashioned.

Regardless, I’m glad it’s back.

Like "The Glass Menagerie," I Never Sang For My Father is a “memory play.” Matt Servitto plays the central character of Gene, the narrator and the son who is trying to be supportive of his aging and ailing parents while working to rebuild his own life after the death of his wife. Both Marsha Mason and Keir Dullea give rich depth to their portrayals of those parents, the doting mother, Margaret, and the distant and angry father, Tom. When Margaret dies, Gene struggles with how best to help his father without losing himself in the process, all the while hoping against hope for some sort of loving acceptance and validation.

It may sound corny, but I can tell you that there were those in the audience around me who were muttering to themselves and offering advice to Gene as they identified with the situation.

The Keen Company’s self-identified mission is to produce “sincere plays.” In this cynical age, sincerity is not the usual fare for the theatergoing crowd. I tip my hat to both the company and to Jonathan Silverman, its resident director, who has shepherded the production with appropriate restraint so that Anderson’s revealing language and sincerely moving play are allowed their day in the spotlight.

Note: The image at the top is of Keir Dullea in his iconic role of Dave Bowman in Stanley Kurbrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," which came out in 1968, the same year as the original production of "I Never Sang For My Father."

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Enron: Full of Sound and Fury, But Signifying Precious Little

Was the irony intentional?

Enron, the much-anticipated British theatrical import about the rise and fall of the Enron Corporation, resembles in no small way the smoke-and-mirrors humbuggery of the business it depicts.

Full of flash and noise, with a cast of 17 headed up by an impressively energized and buffed-up Norbert Leo Butz and presented to us by an even larger number of producers (33), Enron tells the familiar and ugly tale of greed run amok, and the “smartest guys in the room” who helped bring about the current financial mess from which we are still groping to extricate ourselves.

Enron is the second play by Lucy Prebble, possibly more well known for her work as the creator of the Showtime network’s “Secret Diary of a Call Girl,” and the play itself has the glib manner of a splashy but thinly-written television series.

As Prebble tells it, the Enron scandal was precipitated by a grandiose pyramid scheme that was doomed to fail, and the corporation collapsed under mounting debts and desperate efforts to hide its losses; you can rob Peter to pay Paul just so long before things fall apart. Frankly, this all could be told with a few PowerPoint slides in the style of Al Gore’s global warming road show.

But Enron eschews the slides and instead tries to distract the audience with big production values, music, bombastic theatrics, extravagant projections, and a cast that sells itself like a group of high-earning sales representatives for Amway or Mary Kay.

About the cast there is little to complain. Mr. Butz gives a bravura performance as Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, the central figure in the scandal; it is exhausting just to watch him go through his paces (he runs on a pretend treadmill and does real sit-ups during a one-on-one business meeting). I also was taken with Stephen Kunken's performance as Skilling’s partner-in-crime, Enron CFO Andy Fastow, and with that of Gregory Itzin as Enron board chairman Kenneth Lay. The usually glorious Marin Mazzie unfortunately isn’t given enough of significance to do in the role of a made-up character, that of Skilling's sexual partner and chief rival.

In the end, we may feel a certain schadenfreude when the villains get their comeuppance, but we have been given no characters that we care two figs about. Tales about the fall of kings are very Shakespearean, of course, but a wiser choice might have been to juxtapose a parallel story about the plight of the “worker bee” employees of Enron who lost their life savings when they were seduced into buying shares of the corporation’s stock—largely for the purpose of helping to maintain the pyramid just a little longer.

Director Rupert Goold certainly keeps things moving at a breakneck pace, but for all its display of fireworks, Enron ultimately fizzles.

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The Glass Menagerie: Deconstructing Memory

Never trust a memoirist.

Haven’t we learned that lesson yet? Remember James (A Million Little Pieces) Frey being upbraided by Oprah for using her to promote his fake memoir depicting his alleged drug addiction and recovery? Or the more recent never-actually-happened Holocaust memoir of the long-married couple who supposedly met while he was a Concentration Camp inmate and she the young village girl who passed him food through the barbed wire fence?

Even when deliberate chicanery is not the goal, memories are most unreliable things. Even as they are being formed, they are filtered through the emotional and cognitive interpretations of those who are experiencing them, so that objective reality immediately becomes an idiosyncratic version of reality.

With the passage of time, memories continue to reshape themselves, especially in the revisiting and retelling of them. An unpleasant occurrence becomes an amusing anecdote. “I wish I had told that SOB what I really thought of him” becomes “And I stood up right up to him and said...” Perhaps in this way we strive to find resolution to regrets and lost opportunities.

So, what do we make of The Glass Menagerie, or, more specifically, of the current production of Tennessee Williams' iconic “memory play”? Long regarded as an autobiographical play about Williams' family, the production of The Glass Menagerie now on view at the Laura Pels takes a more modernist stance by challenging that assumption and suggesting that what we are seeing is one of those suspect memoirs. Director Gordon Edelstein has altered our viewing of the play by having it unfold directly in Tom’s mind ('Tom' being Tennessee Williams' birth name) as he is in the process of writing it. The production is set in a hotel room, where Tom has ensconced himself with his typewriter and a bottle of Bourbon, and the action of the play takes place within that room—like parallel universes coexisting in the same space. In playing his duel roles of playwright and scion of the “Wingfield” family, Tom crosses those two universes in order to interact with the other characters—his mother Amanda, sister Laura, and “The Gentleman Caller,” the knight in shining armor who has been brought in to rescue Laura from a life of agoraphobic seclusion.

This production has been criticized in some circles for removing us from directly experiencing the action, with the “nudge nudge wink wink” of the framing device that reminds us this is a play, not reality. Frankly, I appreciated this approach. Tom, after all, is not really Tennessee Williams, and The Glass Menagerie was not written in a secret diary. It is a play, originally conceived as a screenplay. Williams wrote it with the expectation, or at least, the ambition, that it would be produced, that it would launch him full tilt into the glamorous world of Hollywood.

Thus, Edelstein has given us memory in its many forms: Tom actually remembering his family; his idiosyncratic view of his family; his idiosyncratic view of own place within the family structure; his self-serving recollection of events; and the public image he wishes to portray. All of these coexist in Edelstein’s version, and, from my perspective, it all works well.

One of the reasons it works well is because it is well-acted. Judith Ivey captures Amanda Wingfield in all of her complexity: abandoned wife, overbearing mother, flirtatious Southern belle, and practical and sacrificing breadwinner trying to hold things together. The fragile Laura, as portrayed by Keira Keeley, seems to exaggerate her crippled gait as it suits her purposes; in her own way, she is as self-serving and self-protective as the rest of her clan. Patch Darragh imbues Tom with layers of restlessness, anger, self-deprecation, social awkwardness, a strong sense of the absurd, and a sharp tongue with which he lashes out at Amanda.

In the second act, when Tom’s coworker, the long-awaited Gentleman Caller, shows up for dinner (and, at least as planned by Amanda, to woo Laura), Edelstein and actor Michael Mosley give us what we must have in order for the play to work. First, they allow us to see the Wingfields through the eyes of a “normal” outsider; the rituals and dysfunctional behaviors that have sustained them as a family suddenly appear quite outlandish. Second, and most importantly, The Gentleman Caller remains a gentleman throughout, and his kind, supportive, quiet conversation with Laura—away from the bickering Amanda and Tom—provides an emotional high point of both the play and of this production: Williams’ “the kindness of strangers” in action.

The delicate moment cannot last, of course, and The Glass Menagerie ends as it must. Tom leaves Amanda and Laura to fend for themselves and goes off to embrace his own destiny, which includes sharing this version of the story with the rest of us.

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Song List from Sondheim Tribute

In response to a request, here is the list of songs in the order they were performed at the second of the two tribute concerts for Stephen Sondheim at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall. I've heard nothing but gushing, glowing reports from those who were there. Similar events are scheduled for City Center and the Roundabout Theater, although at this time I do not have plans to attend.

Something’s Coming

We’re Gonna Be Alright

Don’t Laugh

Johanna

You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow

Love Will See Us Through

Too Many Mornings

The Road You Didn’t Take

It Takes Two

Growing Up

Finishing The Hat

Move On

Pretty Women

A Little Priest

Goodbye for Now (written for the movie ‘Reds’ and performed by two dancers from ABT)

So Many People

Beautiful Girls

The Ladies Who Lunch

Losing My Mind

Glamorous Life

Could I Leave You?

Not A Day Goes By

I’m Still Here

Sunday

Happy Birthday

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Sondheim at 80: All-Star Tribute with the NY Philharmonic

In this, the season of tributes to the glorious god of musical theater, Stephen Sondheim, it would be difficult to top the two days of concerts performed by the New York Philharmonic and a star-studded cast.

I attended the second of the two sold-out concerts in honor of Mr. Sondheim’s 80th birthday, which, fortunately for those who were shut out, were taped for airing on PBS’s Great Performances.

It was a memorable event, lovingly directed by longtime Sondheim aficionado and sometime actor Lonny Price (original cast, Merrily We Roll Along), with the Philharmonic smartly conducted by Paul Gemignani, long identified as Sondheim’s musical director. The program was hosted with grace and good humor by David Hyde Pierce, with a single guest hosting spot ceded to orchestrator Jonathan Tunick, another longtime Sondheim collaborator. With friends like these, Sondheim’s birthday celebration could not have been in better hands.

I’m not going to suggest that every single moment was one of sublime magic, but there was certainly enough that was to make for a richly rewarding evening. Some highlights for me:

•Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters performing “Move On” from Sunday in the Park with George. Both of them looked and sounded in top form as they recreated their performance from more than 25 years ago, from what to me is Sondheim’s richest, most emotional and romantic musical score. Patinkin also gave us a beautiful “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday.

•Patti LuPone, who always seems to be having such a wonderful time onstage, teamed with George Hearn and Michael Cerveris to peform “A Little Priest,” a wickedly fun number from Sweeney Todd: Mrs. Lovett with her two Sweeneys to play against. Hearn and Cerveris also offered up a chilling rendition of “Pretty Women,” climaxing with one Sweeney slitting the other’s throat.

•Patti again, doing an audacious performance of “The Ladies Who Lunch” from Company, right in front of Elaine Stritch, whose original rendition of the song is legendary.

•Elaine Stritch herself, at 85 and looking rather on the frail side, summoning up some great internal power to invest authentic meaning and voice for an ovation-garnering performance of “I’m Still Here” from Follies.

•Chip Zien and Joanna Gleason singing “It Takes Two” from Into The Woods, one of my favorite Sondheim shows. Ms. Gleason looked at Mr. Zien with a slightly startled expression as she sang the first words: “You’ve changed,” a nod to the more than two decades that have passed since they first sang that number on Broadway. It’s these subtle nuances that move a performance from the ordinary to the special. (Another such moment occurred in the aforementioned “The Ladies Who Lunch;” on the line: “Does anyone still wear a hat?” Ms. Stritch gave a little nod that directed our eyes to the cap she was wearing.)

While these were my personal “wow” moments, I’ve got to give high marks to operatic baritone Nathan Gunn, whose heart-melting rendition of “Johanna” from Sweeney Todd was the first number of the evening that made me sit up and take notice, and whose duet with Audra McDonald of “Too Many Mornings” from Follies was simply gorgeous. Also performing magnificently were such powerhouse hitters as Marin Mazzie, Laura Benanti, Victoria Clark, John McMartin, and the always-wonderful-to-see Donna Murphy, whose venomous rendition of “Could I Leave You?” from Follies was enough to give pause to every married man in the audience.

The last official song on the program was the moving choral masterwork, “Sunday” from Sunday in the Park, performed by a stageful of Broadway performers. It was followed with everyone singing “Happy Birthday” to the birthday boy himself, who came up on the stage from the audience to offer, in a voice choked with emotion, his heartfelt thanks. So much for the old image of Sondheim as an insular curmudgeon.

All in all, this was a special evening, a loving and fitting tribute to one of the all time greats!

During the show, I jotted down the song titles in the order in which they were performed. If I can’t wait for PBS to release a video of the event, I will create my own audio version by downloading the numbers onto my iPod.

Note: The photo of Stephen Sondheim comes from the Academy of Achievement, a Museum of Living History in Washington, D. C. Sondheim was inducted in 2005.

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Brave Men and True: The Temperamentals

Near the end of The Pride, Alexi Kaye Campbell’s solidly-acted, emotionally moving play juxtaposing the lives of gay men in the 1950s and in the present time, there is a moment I found to be particularly poignant. The young modern-day characters of Philip and Oliver are attending a Gay Pride parade, and Oliver remarks on an elderly man dressed in flowery clothing he sees on the edge of the parade.

It’s just a passing comment, but it struck me at the time that this must surely be the “Oliver” or the “Philip” from the 1950s, someone who has survived all the years of virulent homophobia, the AIDS crisis, “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell,” and all the legal and political debates, and who has found a place of contentment in his life. Just thinking about whether it was the more self-aware and accepting Oliver, or the more repressed and self-loathing Philip makes for a fascinating consideration of what might have ensued during the half century between the two parts of the play.

Now, having seen The Temperamentals, the engaging, heart-warming, and uplifting play by Jon Marans, about the early gay rights movement in the United States, I wonder if the nod to the elderly gentleman in question might have been inspired by Harry Hay, the gay rights activist and central character in The Temperamentals.

I did not see last year’s original production of The Temperamentals (the title refers to Hay’s “code word” for gay men) at the Barrow Group Studio Theater, but I don’t think it could have been any better than the current one at the New World Stages, where there has been only one change in the cast.

Let me begin by praising the direction of Jonathan Silverstein and the wonderfully cohesive ensemble acting by the cast of five: Thomas Jay Ryan and Michael Urie in the lead roles of Harry Hay and Rudi Gernreich, co-founders of what became known as the Mattachine Society, and their three comrades-in-arms, Arnie Burton (the new cast member), Matthew Schneck, and Sam Breslin Wright, all of whom contribute greatly to the play’s richness of spirit in portraying a group of men who refused to be victimized for the “sin” of existing.

As the play tells it, Hay conceived of starting an organization in the late 1940s to serve as a gathering place for “temperamentals” and a center for human rights activism for what he considered to be a maligned “cultural minority.” As models, he drew on the African American civil rights movement and his experience as a labor rights advocate and member of the Communist Party.

Imagine what it must have been like to be “out” and a Communist in the 1950s during the witch-hunting McCarthy Era, and you get a sense of the undertone of the play. It is a brave and scary thing these men are doing, standing up for one another and their fellow “temperamentals,” and everyone involved has captured just the right tone and attitude and style to tell this story in a way that is genuinely moving without being falsely sentimental or schlocky.

A real strength of the play lies in the gradual shift in tone in the performances of all, moving from reticent to courageous. This feels very real, where reluctant leaders arise from among the “just plain folks” among us, who see a void in leadership and are compelled to fill it. In this regard, special kudos must go to Thomas Jay Ryan. He appears at first almost to be miscast in the role of Hay—so “straight” seeming is his performance—but he gradually lets go of the businessman façade, and with the simple donning of a magenta shawl, transforms into a proud gay man, totally comfortable in himself so that the man and the image are one and the same.

It’s a remarkable performance, devoid of gimmickry or flamboyance. The same can be said for the play as a whole. Gay characters are so often seen as comic sidekicks, flaming drag queens-with-a-heart-of-gold, or angst-ridden victims. The Temperamentals offers another option, an image of gay men as positive role models and leaders.

Note: The picture at the top of the review is that of Harry Hay, age 84, at a 1996 "Radical Faeries" event.

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Quick Takes on Three New Off-Broadway Shows

I recently attended previews of three new off-Broadway shows: Mr. and Mrs. Fitch, The Pride, and Clybourne Park. Here are my impressions.

Mr. and Mrs. Fitch

Mr. and Mrs. Fitch is a light and witty comedy by Douglas Carter Beane, the playwright who gave us the delightfully offbeat As Bees In Honey Drown and the very funny (thanks in no small part to the manic Tony winning performance of Julie White) The Little Dog Laughed.

Mr. and Mrs. Fitch, while set in the here and now, is written and presented in a style that is reminiscent of work from the 1930s. Think of the loving banter between Nick and Nora Charles, as portrayed by William Powell and Myrna Loy in The Thin Man series of films, and you’ll get what I mean.

The title characters, performed by John Lithgow and Jennifer Ehle, are a pair of gossip columnists, who, having run out of anything new to report, have invented an intriguing up-and-coming star. The plot, slim as the MacBook Air laptop on which they compose their column, hangs on the speed with which buzz travels via Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking modes of instant communication.

Don’t go expecting any brilliant insights, but you may have fun trying to guess which New York stars, former stars, and wannabes are being satirized during the Fitches' gossipy chat sessions.

One concern: At the early preview I saw, Lithgow and Ehle tended to oversell every line, SPEAKING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS AND EXCLAMATION MARKS!!! If director Scott Ellis can get them to be more subtle in their delivery, the level of fun is sure to go up for the audience.

The Pride

The Pride comes to us from across the Great Pond, where it was first produced at the Royal Court Theater in 2008, garnering high praise and several prestigious awards for its fledgling playwright, London actor Alexi Kaye Campbell.

The Pride is an examination of gay life and the struggle to build enduring relationships during two different eras—the highly repressed and repressive 1950s and now.

One could quibble over the fact that The Pride offers no particularly new understandings; building and maintaining relationships is difficult in any era. But what it does give us is an engaging and moving human story centering on the lives of two sets of characters that we care about, stellar acting (especially by Ben Whishaw), enough humor to keep it from becoming mawkish, and a hopeful ending--all of which make for a thoroughly satisfying theater-going experience.

The non-linear movement between eras is, perhaps, a little confusing and might be handled better through more obvious staging (costumes, setting, music). I did hear puzzled conversations about it during the intermission. Barring adjustments by director Joe Mantello, I recommend reading the article "A Triangle Built for Two" in the Playbill prior to the start of the play.

Clybourne Park

Playwright Bruce Norris is not known for the subtlety of his writing. The New York Times critic Charles Isherwood used words like “overplotted,” “overstatement” and “savage comic flair” in his review of Norris’s The Pain and the Itch back in 2006. These same descriptions could be applied to Clybourne Park. Whether you view this as a flaw or as the playwright’s hallmark style is a point you might wish to debate after you have seen this compelling new work.

Clybourne Park is a bit messy, with two acts that sort of connect but which could use more of a bridge between them. It wouldn’t hurt for audience members to have a familiarity with A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry’s classic American drama in which the matriarch of an African American family wants to move everyone to a house in the all-white community of "Clybourne Park."

As in The Pride, Clybourne Park is a two-era play, set, in fact, in the same two eras of the 1950s and now. (Are we seeing the start of a trend of 50-year spreads to capture societal changes over time?) Both Act I and Act II depict events surrounding changes in a community, centered on its racial makeup. In 1959, the theme is “white flight;” in 2009, the theme is “gentrification,” as young white suburbanites rediscover the inner city neighborhoods from which their families had previously fled.

There is more than enough here to wrap a play around, but Norris brings in several other plot elements, the most significant one being a family tragedy that is the cause of the white couple’s decision to leave their home in Act I. As that story unfolds during the first half of Clybourne Park, the gradual revealing of this sad event takes us from what seems at first to be a gentle, rather bland comedy to a disturbing realistic drama, solidly performed by a strong ensemble of actors and well directed by Pam MacKinnon.

Whatever flaws there are, Norris’s “savage comic flair” provides a real wallop, and his sharp-tongued examination of racial tensions during both eras makes David Mamet’s “Race” look like a mere academic discussion.

Totally Irrelevant Trivia

In my recent review of Ernest in Love, I praised lyricist Ann Croswell for cleverly rhyming the words “bachelor” and “satchel or” in one of the numbers. Turns out, the same rhyme had been used by Johnny Mercer in his lyrics for the musical Li’l Abner some four years earlier. To be fair, for that same show Mercer also rhymed “bachelor” and “natu’ler,” a pairing that had been used by E. Y. (“Yip”) Harburg in Finian’s Rainbow a full decade before Li’l Abner.

Just wanted to set the record straight.

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Jerky Ride Through the Mind of a Mass Murderer

Some plays are intended to disturb--not just by shaking up the audience through provocative ideas, but by using the theatrical platform to create a viscerally unsettling experience. Once such play is Jerk, ending a short run at Performance Space 122 as part of the Under the Radar Festival.

Jerk essentially is an hour spent inside the head of a torturer/murderer. Based on the events of an actual serial murder spree that took place in Texas some thirty years ago, Jerk recounts some of the gory killings perpetrated by a middle aged man and his two teenage accomplices. The grisly tale is related by “David Brooks,” the surviving member of the threesome, who uses a set of puppets to relate the story.

When the audience enters the theater, “David,” intensely portrayed by French actor/performance artist Jonathan Capdevielle, is waiting patiently for us on a folding chair set up on the floor of a dingy basement suggestive of the one in which the killings took place, or perhaps a space in a facility for the criminally insane. It seems that David has been performing his little puppet shows before audiences of psychology students, not unlike ourselves, perhaps as a form of psychotherapy or to serve as a living cautionary tale along the lines of those reformed former gang members who make the rounds of the country’s middle schools

Once we are seated, an usher comes around bearing booklets titled “Two texts for a puppet play by David Brooks.” Before he begins, David says, he wants us to read the first of these “nonfiction texts” so we have the appropriate background to understand his story. These preludes crudely establish the story, which David then completes by acting out the gruesome events with his crudely-made puppets. One puppet represents Dean, the ringleader; one represents David’s cohort and sexual partner, Wayne; and another represents the victims. David tells us he himself will be the puppet representing David.

Note that I have twice used the word “crude,” because that’s the most apt description for the first half of the play, in which “David” re-enacts several of the tortures and killings, as well as the sexual activities in which he says the trio engaged during and after the deeds. It is disturbing, not for psychological reasons, but only because it is most unpleasant to watch. Certainly it was not surprising to see a number of audience members leave about 20 minutes into Jerk.

Still, those who remained did get to experience the play’s real strength during the last 20 minutes or so. After we have read the second selection from “Two texts,” we return to a David who has abandoned puppetry and the physical re-enactments of the first section. Through a powerful act of ventriloquism (the program identifies a ventriloquism coach), Capdevielle as David continues the story in the three voices he used in the first half. Here, he has succeeded in getting us inside of David’s head, without moving his lips or using the puppets; indeed, as the play comes to a close, David seems to fall into a catatonic state, drool dripping from his mouth as we hear his memories, up until the arrival of the police.

I do not want to oversell the last 20 minutes of Jerk against the first 40, which are most off-putting—taking us not to any psychological insights, but into the realm inhabited by contemporary horror/torture movies like Saw and Hostel. Yet the play, as a whole, does provide a visceral experience while raising a serious consideration of the nature of someone who would be drawn into a world such as that experienced by David, Wayne, and Dean.

Beyond that, we wonder about the reliability of David as the narrator, who does come off as relatively less corrupt than the other two--whose stories are, after all, being represented by the person who killed one or both of them. Then again, we wonder if there ever were actually three killers, or did David’s mind merely concoct the other two?

In the end, I can’t really recommend to anyone I know that they see this play. The “gross-out” factor outweighs the psychological intrigue. Yet, I imagine that Jerk will stick in a corner of my mind along with other far more successfully disturbing plays like The Lieutenant of Inishmore and Shockheaded Peter, both of which I consider to be among the best shows of the first decade of the 21st century, as I will discuss in an upcoming blog entry.

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Off-Broadway Delights, Part III: The Irish Rep

The Irish Repertory Theatre is probably my favorite Off-Broadway venue. The creativity and skill behind its productions is all the more remarkable when you get a glimpse of its postage stamp of a stage and then see what they can do with it. You never know what you’re going to see there, as it explores its mission of presenting works by Irish and Irish American playwrights, ranging from lightweight fare like the musical comedy Ernest in Love to under-appreciated dramatic classics like The Emperor Jones—both from this season.

Irish Rep co-founder Ciarán O’Reilly, serving as director, has breathed new life into Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, a play from 1920 that is generally viewed today as a musty, racially insensitive, and pretty much unplayable psychodrama about one Brutus Jones, an African American escaped murderer who has ensconced himself as the self-proclaimed and decidedly despotic emperor of an isolated Island.

When we meet Mr. Jones, all stagger and threat, he is near the end of his reign, on the brink of being deposed and executed by rebels. For the bulk of the one-act play, we journey with him as he flees through the jungle, chased by both the rebels and his personal and racial memories (à la Carl Jung) and demons that haunt his every waking minute.

O’Reilly, aided and abetted by a remarkable company onstage and off, has turned this into a glorious and triumphant theatrical event. John Douglas Thompson offers a powerful performance as Brutus Jones, giving us a complex and difficult character, much as he did in his portrayal of Othello in last season’s production of Shakespeare’s tragedy with the Theater For A New Audience. The ensemble of players that surround Thompson turn in solid supportive work, but the real brilliance of the production is the use of puppets, masks, original music, lighting effects, and well-choreographed movement to create a truly theatrical experience and to thoroughly engage the audience in Jones’s flight for his life.

In recent weeks, The Emperor Jones transferred to the SoHo Playhouse to make way for Ernest in Love, a revival of an Off-Broadway musical from 1960 based on Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest.

This is a small show, ideally suited to the Irish’s Rep’s tiny stage. “Charming” is an adjective that admittedly does not suggest “must-see theater,” but it is a most appropriate description to apply to a musical with charming tunes, charmingly acted by a charming company of players.

Not surprisingly, the best lines come straight from Wilde. I’ll cite one I especially like, Lady Bracknell’s reaction to catching Jack on bended knee in the act of proposing to her daughter Gwendolen, said in a most imperious tone: “Rise, sir, from this semi-recumbent posture. It is most indecorous.”

The show’s creators, Ann Croswell (book and lyrics) and Lee Pockriss (music) drew inspiration from Wilde in at least one of the show’s tunes, “A Handbag Is Not A Proper Mother,” in which we are given the clever rhyming pair of “bachelor” and “satchel or” in a way that actually makes sense, and which leads us to our trivia question of the day: In what other musical from the current season will we find a clever rhyme for “bachelor?”

Regardless of whether your tastes run to chamber musicals or to psychological drama, or to anything else in between, for that matter, the Irish Rep is willing to tackle it and uncover its hidden magic. Kudos to all involved for understanding and sharing the magic of theater.

Oh, and that trivia question? Check out the song "The Begat" in Finian's Rainbow, in which lyricist Yip Harburg has rhymed "bachelor" with "natchu'ler."

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Off-Broadway Delights, Part II

This is the second in an ongoing series of postings about Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway acting companies that provide some of the best theatergoing experiences in New York. Indeed, I must say that during the current season, these smaller organizations have offered more interesting, engaging, and exciting productions than pretty much anything that has opened on Broadway.

Case in point: Playwrights Horizons, about to enter its fifth decade as “home to new American theater,” currently is offering not one but two exceptionally fine new plays.

The first of these is Circle Mirror Transformation by playwright Annie Baker. Ms Baker, not yet 30, is on a meteoric trajectory, churning out plays almost faster than I can see them. Her Body Awareness drew favorable reviews and award nominations (Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle) when it had its world premiere at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2008. Another of her plays, The Aliens, will have its world premiere this spring at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater.

In Circle Mirror Transformation, we follow the members of a weekly acting class at a local community center in Shirley, Vermont. Over time, the students participate in a variety of exercises that require them to uncover inner truths in order for them to become sensitive to themselves and to each other. The ultimate test is a repeated exercise that requires them to lie face-up on the floor, taking random turns counting aloud from 1-10; the goal is to be so aware of one another that, as a group, they reach “10” without having more than one person call out a number at any one time. Between the exercises and the individual conversations that take place among the characters, we witness how each of them changes as a result of their experiences in the class.

A playwright with a keen ear for authentic dialog, Baker provides us with a group of compelling characters whose stories we want to hear. She has been aided by a cast of consistently strong performers who convincingly embody those characters, making Circle Mirror Transformation a memorable evening of theater.

Special kudos to Tracee Chimo as “Lauren,” a 16-year-old member of the group of otherwise middle-aged men and women. Ms. Chimo captures the spirit of a teenage girl who is shy and awkward, yet who shows us she is on the verge of becoming a strong, confident woman. Appropriately, the final moments of the play belong to her.

Finally, we mustn’t neglect to acknowledge the fine direction by Sam Gold. This is a delicate play, in the sense that there are no huge dramatic outbursts or meltdowns or moments of glory for anyone. Circle Mirror Transformation is not August: Osage County, which requires over-the-top performances. Nor is it A Chorus Line, in which each of the characters is given a moment in the spotlight. Instead, it is essential that the actors perform as a truly collaborative ensemble; the “1-10” counting exercise is a perfect metaphor for what is called for. Gold is to be commended for directing with style, grace, and an appropriately soft touch that allows much of the dialog to feel spontaneous.

The second offering at Playwrights Horizons is a new play by Melissa James Gibson, called This, another world premiere for the organization. Ms. Gibson, the more experienced of the two playwrights, has had productions of her plays done by Steppenwolf in Chicago, by the Woolly Mammouth Theatre Company in Washington, D. C. and the La Jolla Playhouse in La Jolla, California. She also won an Obie Award for [sic], produced at the SoHo Rep in 2001.

In This, Gibson gives us another ensemble of characters, a circle of long-time friends who are struggling with some of the disappointments and challenges that life brings in middle-age when the futures we imagined for ourselves at 20 come face-to-face with reality.

Jane (Julianne Nicholson), recently widowed, is in the throes of mourning for her husband, trying to raise her daughter on her own, and struggling to make sense of her own life. Her friends Marrell (Eisa Davis) and Tom (Darren Pettie) have found their own lives turned upside-down and their relationship strained by the arrival of their newborn son, who never seems to sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time. Everyone’s nerves are on edge, and the inevitable combustion occurs when Jane and Tom enter into a brief sexual relationship. But like Annie Baker, Ms. Gibson and director Daniel Aukin use restraint and a deep sense of who the characters are in order to develop the play as a realistic human drama; we never enter the realm of soap opera as the story unfolds.

What Circle Mirror Transformation and This have in common is a maturity in their writing about the complicated nature of human relationships. Baker and Gibson both eschew the shortcuts of sound bites and sitcom writing that plague far too many plays these days. They are writing about grownups trying to make it through life as best they can.

Their work reminds me of two exceptional plays I saw many years ago: Moonchildren, by Michael Weller, and Gemini, by Albert Innaurato. Both of these were written in the 1970s and had central characters who were in their early 20s. The two playwrights captured perfectly the tone and mood of the characters they portrayed in a way that is rarely seen in the theater, where the young tend to be wise beyond their years, and the adults tend to behave as if they were far younger than their chronological age.

In a similar vein, Circle Mirror Transformation and This, offer us characters who are middle-aged, and who behave accordingly; they are the “Moonchildren” all grown up. I look forward to future opportunities to see work by Baker and Gibson, and I hope that they stay grounded in the drama of human life.

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Ragtime disappoints

I’m back after a longer-than-anticipated intermission, owing to other commitments that have kept me away from these pages, although, I hasten to add, not from the theater. So there is much catching up to do over the holiday break, with eight shows to report on.

I want to use today’s entry as an opportunity to explain a little bit of what it is that I look for as an avid theatergoer while I share my impressions of Ragtime: The Musical.

Let me begin by saying there is much to appreciate and admire in the revival of Ragtime, the many-layered musical based on the 1975 historical novel of the same title by author E. L. Doctorow.

If my choice of words (“appreciate and admire”) makes it sound as though I am trying to find a polite way of indicating I didn’t care much for Ragtime, then you’ve picked up on my message. One thing you should know about me is that I don’t go to a show hoping to appreciate and admire it; that noncommittal phrase is something I save for some of the paintings and sculptures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but not for the living arts.

What I want from the theater is to be viscerally engaged, to be drawn in by characters who have interesting stories to tell AND about whom I can empathize or, at least, sympathize. That is simply not possible with Ragtime, which is about the grand sweep of events rather than about the characters, who stay tantalizingly out of reach.

I am not comparing the current revival of Ragtime with the original production of a decade ago, which I did not see but which left me with the lingering impression I had missed a breakthrough piece of theater. Certainly, with such performers as Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Marin Mazzie leading the way, the singing, at least, must have been terrific, although the production itself had a reputation of being overblown and extravagantly expensive, boasting not only a large cast but an all-out bombast of production values that included fireworks and a working Model-T Ford.

For this revival, they nixed the fireworks and replaced the Model-T with a skeletal chassis. But still, with a cast of 30 or so (I lost count), and an orchestra only slightly smaller, this remains quite a hefty production.

I do want to make it clear that the problem I have with Ragtime is not about a lack of talent or the loving care with which this revival has been produced. The problem is that the show itself just does not work satisfactorily, or, to be more fair, to my satisfaction. Indeed, if it weren’t for the iconic opening title number, which beautifully captures the mood and theme of the show, and the recurrent ragtime music throughout the production, there would be little left for me to admire or appreciate.

Playwright Terrence McNally, who wrestled Doctorow’s novel into submission, has done a stellar job of separating out the three major story strands and of giving the many characters who take turns sharing center stage enough individualism so that the audience can, without referring to a scorecard, keep track of who’s who. Likewise, the 30+ numbers by Stephen Flaherty (music) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics) move the storyline forward in ways that allow the performers to shine individually and collectively in the spotlight. But to what ends?

Therein lies my frustration as a theatergoer. In telling such a grandiose story—the story of America (or at least the story of the greater New York region) at the turn of the 20th Century—the creators forgot about the people whose lives are the story of America. America can’t be the central character, yet apparently it is.

Of the two acts, Act I is the stronger. It moves logically from the general to the specific—starting with the glorious opening number that introduces us simultaneously to three worlds: the African American community, the newly-arrived collective of Jewish immigrants, and the upscale and sheltered Wasp-y world of New York City’s northern suburbs. By the time Act I has ended, the story has narrowed, and ragtime pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr. has taken command of our attention. We do care. We are outraged at all he has been forced to face. We want justice. We want to know what will happen to him and to his son. We can’t wait until the intermission has ended to find out.

And then the orchestra brings us back. And the story of Coalhouse Walker Jr. has to wait and wait and wait while the story of Mother and Tateh unfolds. It’s not that we don’t like Mother and Tateh, or that we aren’t taken by their sweet budding romance. But, geez, what happened to the show? By the time we finally get back to Coalhouse’s story, we don’t care all that much anymore. Ragtime distances itself from us so that Coalhouse’s unhappy fate is nothing more than the inevitable unrolling of history. Indeed, it turns out that all of the characters, despite every effort by a strong cast of performers to humanize them, are merely symbolic representations of people.

Ragtime, the book, followed a similar path, but Doctorow managed to create memorable characters by taking enough time and care with their individual development so that we could feel their aliveness. No one expects a musical to be able to paint as rich a portrait as a fully developed novel, but Ragtime, the musical, sinks under the weight of its own pretentiousness so that, in the end, viewing it is akin to reading a boring chapter in a boring history textbook. You can’t “revive” something that never had life in it to begin with.

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