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.  

___________________

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.  

  

‘The Assembled Parties’: Light and Hecht Shine In Richard Greenberg's Quirky New Play

 

'The Assembled Parties':  14 Rms Pk Vu

In The Assembled Parties, the new play by Richard Greenberg, the buzz begins almost as soon the audience members take their seats at the Friedman Theatre and begin to peruse their programs. 

There it is, right beneath the cast list.  Place:  A fourteen-room apartment on Central Park West.  Let me-GASP-repeat. A fourteen-room apartment on Central Park West. Now, that’s one sure way to get the attention of real estate-obsessed New York theatergoers!

So before saying a word about the play itself, let me tip my hat to scenic designer Santo Loquasto for his amazing multi-room revolving set, which gives us a sense of what it would be like to call such a magnificent expanse of space “home.”  If only… [sigh!]

But, I digress.

If I were to give an executive summary of The Assembled Parties, I would say it is about the truths that hurt and the lies that heal, and the unexpected acts of kindness that people are capable of bestowing on one another from time to time.  

Be warned, though; the play is something of a puzzle box.  It takes some patience to get through the opaque exposition of Act I, in which we are privy to only just enough information to lead us down the path to faulty conclusions.  It isn’t until Act II, as the characters—particularly those played most compellingly by Jessica Hecht and Judith Light—reveal themselves more fully, that we come to appreciate the play’s most satisfying heart. 

Act I and Act II take place on a two different Christmas Days, one in 1980 and the other in 2000.  In both instances, members of a Jewish family have gathered at the upscale apartment of Julie (Ms. Hecht) and Ben (Jonathan Walker), and their sons Scotty (Jake Silbermann) and Timmy (Alex Dreier).  The occasion is Christmas dinner. 

Mr. Greenberg never does explain why the Jews in his play are celebrating Christmas, nor why the apartment is filled with “goyishe tchotchkes,” as Ms. Light’s character declaims.  I will say, however, that I was reminded of playwright Alfred Uhry’s The Last Night of Ballyhoo (1997), which opens on a character called Lala Levy busily and happily decorating a Christmas tree, until her mother chastises her: “Jewish Christmas trees don’t have stars!” 

[The link between the two plays is not, I think, a random coincidence, as Lala Levy was played on Broadway by an actress by the name of Jessica Hecht.  Hmmm!  And, for the record, the Christmas tree onstage at the Friedman does not have a star, but an angel on top.]

But I digress again.

As, actually, does the playwright, who appears to be toying with us throughout Act I, replete as it is with tantalizing red herrings about the relationships among the characters.   These include, in addition to the apartment dwellers, Ben’s sister Faye (Ms. Light), her husband Mort (Mark Blum), and their daughter Shelley (Lauren Blumenfeld), along with Scotty’s college friend Jeff (Jeremy Shamos). 

Questions will surely fill your head:  Why have Faye and Mort remained in a clearly loveless marriage for so long? Why does their daughter Shelley seem to be such a misfit, reminiscent of Lisa Loopner, one of Gilda Radner’s iconic characters from Saturday Night Live?  And what is the real story behind the ruby necklace?   Do note that only some of these questions will be answered in due course. 

And any lover of language will have a field day with the play.  Characters use words like “feckless” and “quixotic” and “gravitas” in their everyday conversation; drop references to e. e. cummings, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Gail Sheehy; toss around mouthfuls like “hemidemisemiquaver” and “oasis-less desert” (try saying that one three times fast!); incorporate Yiddish expressions as if they had air quotes around them; and, in the case of Ms. Hecht, employ a heightened affectation of speech that is uniquely her own (or that of her character, a former and apparently famous movie actress).

As I said…a puzzle box.  And yet, despite the odd layers and the fragmented bits of information that Mr. Greenberg has piled on top of one another, The Assembled Parties has a rich vein of humanity running through it.  By the end, you may find yourself caught unawares and surprisingly moved, especially by the amazingly strong, caring, and optimistic women played so well by Ms. Light and Ms. Hecht.   Expect those names to appear on the list of Tony nominees. 

The cast as a whole is uniformly strong, and Lynne Meadow has directed with a sure hand.  And if the title is a little obscure, think of it in the same vein as the set of directions that might come with a Christmas present:  "some assembly required."  

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