A TREASURE TROVE OF GREAT THEATRICAL MOMENTS IN 2016

A Celebration of the 2016 Theater Year

Among the 163 productions I saw on and off Broadway in 2016, there were many delights, surprises, and moments that triggered a surge of Pure Delight. Here are six standouts:


A Surprising Turn After A Raggy Start

AL PACINO: By the time I saw David Mamet's much maligned play China Doll near the end of its Broadway run, things had miraculously fallen into place. Mr. Pacino had no trouble with his lines, his enunciation, voice projection, or performance, all of which were sharply criticized (along with the play itself) during previews and after the long-delayed opening. With rewrites in place and after a lot more work, the star was excellent in a demanding, non-stop role in the play about the waning days of a major power broker who hasn't quite lost his edge, no matter how trapped he seems to be. Other than an ending which came across as oddly tacked on, it seems that Mr. Mamet and Mr. Pacino were on to something after all. And despite predictions that this would be the last we'd be seeing of the 76-year-old actor on stage, he soon will be co-starring with Judith Light in God Looked Away at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. Pacino will be playing Tennessee Williams in the final rocky years of his life in the play penned by Williams's close friend and biographer Dotson Rader. Assuming Mr. Pacino wants to bring it to New York, expect to see it in the spring.



Two Performances that Got Better and Better

DANNY BURSTEIN AND JESSICA HECHT:  The delight in this latest rendition of the classic musical Fiddler on the Roof was in seeing two masterful performers, Danny Burstein as Tevye and Jessica Hecht as Golde, continuing to grow into these iconic roles over time.  I saw it early in the run, and then again several months later.  Happily neither had fallen into the famous Ethel Merman mantra concerning her opening night performances: "Call me Miss Bird's Eye; it's frozen." In the early days, Mr. Burstein tried so hard to not be Zero Mostel that his Tevye seemed to be just one of the residents of Anatevka  – a great ensemble player but not the over-the-top milkman we've come to expect. For her part, Ms. Hecht's Golde started out as an overbearing shrew who you might imagine (as does Tevye) "screaming at the servants day and night." Yet by my second viewing, Burstein had found his Tevye and made him as assertive and generous of spirit as you could ever want to see, and Ms. Hecht shaped her Golde into a tough yet tender-hearted women, beaten but not thwarted by her harsh life.  When they sang "Do You Love Me?" you absolutely could see them as the couple at the core of Fiddler.


A Special Year for a Special Guy

SHELDON HARNICK: 2016 was a great year for the spry, witty, and effervescent 92-year-old lyricist and delightful raconteur.  Mr. Harnick showed up at celebrations and tv shows and lecture halls all over the city as revivals of his shows sprang up everywhere:  Fiddler on the Roof and She Loves Me on Broadway, and Fiorello! and a reworked version of The Rothschilds off Broadway.  What a guy!

A Director Soars

RACHEL CHAVKIN:  It's a sure bet she will be nominated for a Tony for her thrilling direction of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, now wowing audiences on Broadway. Ms. Chavkin directed all of the previous incarnations of David Malloy's pop opera, which is derived from a section of Tolstoy's War and Peace. A great strength has always been the way in which the performers have woven around the audience members seated at cafe tables in relatively small off Broadway venues. But how on earth could the director recreate that feeling in a large Broadway house?  Suffice it to say, she had taken on the challenge and has flown with it to the stratosphere. Think "Yellow Brick Road" to get an idea of how she skillfully makes the entire Imperial Theater feel like an intimate Russian cafe. Ms. Chavkin has shown herself to be one of the most exciting directors working in New York now.  Great Comet is merely the latest production to have been polished by her gifted  hand.  Recently, she helmed the sit-up-and-take-notice production of The Royale at Lincoln Center, and the folk opera Hadestown at the New York Theatre Workshop. Both were resplendent. Don't be surprised if you see the latter return to another venue before too long.


Theater Company Bats 1000


RED BULL THEATER and its artistic director Jesse Berger keep improving year after year. Just a little over a decade old, the company began by doing off-the-wall productions of rarely-seen Jacobean dramas (e. g. The Revenger's Tragedy)  in whatever venues it could manage to find, and now it is doing first-rate productions with top-tier actors. In 2016, Red Bull gave us two glorious productions:  a fiery version of Shakespeare's Coriolanus and a brilliantly comic production of Sheridan's The School for Scandal.  Three mighty cheers for Red Bull!


A Chance to Brush Up Your ... 

SHAKESPEARE: It was a great year for the bard, as well. In addition to Red Bull's bravado version of Coriolanus, we got to see a marvelous Troilus and Cressida, along with the great Janet McTeer strutting the boards as Petruchio in the all female production of Taming of the Shrew, both  at Central Park's Delcorte Theater. More recently, we had the opportunity to enjoy the innovative Seeing Place's edgy production of Macbeth in the East Village. Right across the street from it, and playing at the same time, was the Broadway-bound production of Othello, starring David Oyelowo in the title role and Daniel Craig as the nefarious villain Iago.  We also had a quirky and rare production by a company calling itself Bad Quarto of The Tragicall History of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke, the earliest known published version of Shakespeare's tragedy.  

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There were many other highlights to the theater year, of course.  In a previous entry, I identified 15 performances that stood out.  Click here to link: (15 great performances in 2016). 


Have a Happy New Year, everyone, and here's wishing you all the best of theater-going in 2017!!!



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.  

  

CHINA DOLL: Getting Its Act Together As It Prepares to Close

Who would have thunk it?  China Doll, a play that has been ripped to shreds for both its content and the performance of the superstar at its center, is now pretty much ready for prime time – just as it is about to close.

Let’s take a look at the two chief complaints that have been lodged against China Doll’s playwright, David Mamet, and its star, Al Pacino, and see where things stand as of earlier this week when I saw it. (These criticisms, by the way, did not hurt box office receipts; the show’s lead producer recently announced that the play has recouped its $3.7 million investment). 

Complaint Number One:  That the play itself is barely comprehensible. That was then; this is now.  Now it is comprehensible. It is about an aging high-power businessman who is getting ready to bail out, marry his much younger girlfriend, and enjoy his golden years with the lucre he has been gathering over a lifetime of wheeling and dealing. Most of the play consists of one-sided phone calls during which the businessman is trying to wrap up loose ends.  It also becomes clear there are several vultures hanging around eager to pluck out his eyes when it appears to them he has lost some of his edge.  

           

David Mamet, who arguably has lost some of his own edge since the brilliant days of Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-The-Plow, comes close to that level of writing (great snappy lines that allow Pacino to show his character’s business acumen as well as his ability to coerce or to turn on the charm at the drop of a hat).  Mamet also gives us something new – the creation of fully-realized characters whom we only ever know through Mr. Pacino’s one-sided conversations, yet who seem to be as real as if they were onstage.   

Complaint Number Two:  That Al Pacino has no idea of how to play the role, and, at 75, he cannot sustain the performance.  That was then; this is now. Now Pacino's character, Mickey Ross, is also fully realized, on stage as well as on the page.  This has emerged as a Tony-worthy performance by Pacino. (Yes, he now is that good, though conceivably Tony voters who saw the play earlier in the run may not agree.)

In any event, Pacino brings the unseen and unheard characters to life just by the way he shifts his voice and body language as he talks to them on the phone.  We know when he is talking to or about his girlfriend, when he is talking to people involved in selling him a new airplane, when he is talking to his attorney or to a longtime “frenemy” of a business associate, even when these phone calls swirl and spin together with such rapidity that Pacino comes close to presenting us with the impossible phenomenon of the one-man overlapping dialog.  And if he had trouble learning his lines in time for the play’s opening, it is not surprising; it is a marathon of words he must run for every single performance. If there remain prompters of any sort, they are not visible, at least not from where I sat in the orchestra section.  

[I pause here to mention that China Doll also has a director, and a very good one, too, in Pam MacKinnon (the Obie-winning Clybourne Park and a Tony-wnning revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). Her ability to shape things during all of the early mayhem of this production is not clear, given the two powerhouses she was dealing with in the playwright and the star.]

Although he dominates, Mr. Pacino is not entirely alone onstage. Christopher Denham gives a very efficient performance as a very efficient assistant named Carson who is able to keep up with Mickey Ross’s demands and provide him with the information he needs always to be able to rattle off on a moment’s notice.  Keep an eye on Carson as the vultures start to close in on Mickey. Indeed, my only real criticism of the play lies with its very last scene involving the pair of them. It is logical and in keeping with Pacino’s character, but it comes off as a clumsy way of bringing things to a close.

But make no mistake about it.  This is David Mamet’s play, and this is Al Pacino’s star turn, and, now at the end of its run, they show they that they have what it takes. If this should wind up to be Mr. Pacino’s swan song on Broadway, he has done himself proud. Too bad we had to wait so long for things to jell.  

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 new website Show-Score.Com, where you will find capsule reviews of current plays from Yours Truly and many other New York critics.