Wrapping Up A Year of Theatergoing. Part II: Spring Semester

Welcome to Part II of a discussion of my season of theatergoing in 2009-2010. Part I covered the “Fall Semester,” i. e. the time span between September of 2009 and December of 2010. I pick up now with January of 2010 and go through to the end of May, the “Spring Semester.” The notion of “semesters” of theater is a nod to my vocation as a college professor. And since this is grading time, I have given each production a letter grade based entirely on my own criteria.

Here, more-or-less in the order of my seeing them, are the plays in my 2009-2010 season of theater-going. Part II: Spring Semester.

Don’t know if there is any significance to the coincidence, but we begin, as we will end, with a play by Donald Margulies. The first play I saw in January was Time Stands Still, which boasted solid performances by a cast that included Eric Bogasian, Brian D’Arcy James, Laura Linney, and Alicia Silverstone. The two women outshined the men, though the play itself was only moderately interesting, and I continue to long for Margulies to plumb the depths of the interesting issues he raises. Overall grade: B+

Jerk was a memorably disturbing venture into the mind of a serial killer, as much a piece of performance art as a play. Some brilliant moments, but utterly too creepy (and not in a "cool" way) for me to recommend it to anyone I know. Overall grade: C-

Present Laughter was a revival of a Noel Coward play that has never worked for me. Can American actors perform the lighter-than-air stuff of British drawing room comedy? Not in this case, anyway. Overall grade: C-

Venus in Fur by David Ives was a quirky take on the battle of the sexes, anchored by a wonderful performance by Nina Arianda as an aspiring actress who jumps around like a quantum electron from being ditzy, to intellectual, to sexy and dangerous. Overall grade: A-

Mr. and Mrs. Fitch was an unfunny comedy by a talented writer, Douglas Carter Beane, unfunnily performed by talented actors John Lithgow and Jennifer Ehle. Overall grade. C-

Clybourne Park was a provocative play about race relations by playwright Brice Norris, well directed by Pam MacKinnon and strongly acted by a sharp ensemble of actors. Overall grade: A

The Pride, by Alexi Kaye Campbell, juxtaposed gay relationships in the middle and late twentieth century. While the play itself did not offer much that was new, and suffered from some confusing directing decisions, it was blessed with riveting performances by Hugh Dancy and Ben Whishaw. Overall grade: A-

True West, A Lie of the Mind, Ages of the Moon, all by playwright Sam Shepherd, were performed at three different venues during this season. This was a great opportunity to get a taste of Shepherd’s offbeat work--the first two from 1980 and 1985 respectively, and the third, a new play about the reconnecting of two old friends. Of the three, it was the new work—more restrained and far more focused than the out-of-control sprawl of the older pieces—that I enjoyed the most. Overall grade for the trio: A

A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller was given a flawless revival, smartly directed by Gregory Mosher and brilliantly performed by a cast that included Liev Schreiber, Scarlett Johansson, and Jessica Hecht. Schreiber, in particular, blew me out of the water by layering every moment with great psychological depth and unpredictable ambiguity. Overall grade: A+

The Duchess of Malfi, the 17th century drama by John Webster, was given a strong production by the Red Bull Company, which specializes in performances of Jacobean plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries. It’s been fun watching this company mature, as director Michael Sexton has let go some of his way-over-the-top style to trust these already over-the-top plays to take front and center. Overall grade: A

The Temperamentals by Jon Marans, a thoroughly engaging play about the early gay rights movement in the United States, was given a terrific production in its transfer to New World Stages. Kudos to all involved! Overall grade: A+

The Cradle Will Rock, Marc Blitzstein’s iconic pro-worker, anti-capitalist musical from the 1930s was given a topnotch production at Theater Ten Ten, one of those gems of small theater companies operating out of church basements scattered around New York City. The show, well performed by a cast of excellent singers, was done in the style of the legendary original production, which took place in an impromptu space with no sets, props, or costumes and but a single piano. Overall grade: A

Next Fall by Jeffrey Nauffts deals with the intersection of religion and homosexuality. I found the play and the performances to be tedious, but, hey, what do I know, since it a nominee for a 2010 Tony Award for best play! Overall grade: C

Measure for Measure, one of Shakespeare’s notoriously difficult plays—call it a dark comedy—was presented with clarity by the Theater for a New Audience, though not with the overall power as last year’s production of Othello by the same company and director, Arin Arbus. Overall grade: B

The Glass Menagerie, one of Tennessee Williams’s best-known and successful plays, was given a strong production with some original, and to my mind, quite compelling direction by Gordon Edelstein, who challenges the generally accepted notion that the play is truly Williams' great “memory play” rather than a piece of writing that manipulates memory. Special credit to Judith Ivey, who has beautifully captured the character of Amanda Wingfield in all of her complexity. Overall grade: A+

A Behanding in Spokane by Martin McDonough is a quirky and ultimately quite funny dark comedy, with top-notch performances by Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell. Overall grade: A-

Red, by John Logan, is another Tony nominated play that I didn’t care much for, despite strong performances by Alfred Mlina and Eddie Redmayne and some intriguing staging under Michael Grandage’s direction. I found it to be pretentious, more of an essay or lecture than a play. Overall grade: B-

Yank, by Joe and David Zellnik, a musical about relationships among gay soldiers during World War II, was given a delightful, warm, and loving production by the York Theater Company, yet another theater group housed in a church basement. The show is set to move to Broadway, hopefully retaining its star Bobby Steggert. Overall grade: A

A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick by Kia Corthron was not so much a play as it was a means of conveying issues that were obviously filling the head of the playwright. The theme of water (draught, flood, thirst, drowning, poisoned water supply, and the bottled water industry) sort of held things together, but the play also dealt with race relations, religion, the battle of the sexes, genocide, visions, migraine headaches, and probably several more important ideas. It was quite a juggling act, though not always compelling theater. Overall grade: B

Anyone Can Whistle, the short-lived mess-of-a-show by Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim that saw 12 performances in 1964, was given a revelatory production as part of the Encores theater season at City Center. Wow and Triple Wow to all involved! Overall grade: A+

Family Week, Beth Henley’s play about a dysfunctional family and an experimental psychotherapy approach, was generally ripped to shreds by the critics when it was recently revised. I found it interesting enough but rather sad, with a message of “you can’t win, no matter what you do.” Overall grade: B

Promenade, another quirky musical from the 1960s, by Maria Irene Fornés and Al Carmines, was given a one-performance “reading” at the New World Stages. What is most noteworthy is that it was the kickoff for what is intended to be an Encores-like series for Off-Broadway musicals, something that I would love to see happen. While the performances were uneven, it was nice to see Andrea McArdle and Neva Small again. (Thank you, David, for sending me a copy of the original Off-Broadway cast recording!) The overall grade of A is for the concept.

Gabriel, by playwright Moira Buffini, is a melodramatic World War II story about evil Nazis, a hidden Jew, desperate women, and a mysterious stranger. Still, it has been given a rich and well-acted production by the Atlantic Theater Company. Overall grade: B

Enron by Lucy Prebble was a frenetic, noisy, visually extravagant empty vessel of a play about the rise and fall of the mega-greedy. Overall grade: C

I Never Sang for My Father by Robert Anderson, about the troubled relationship between a middle aged son and his elderly father, saw a strong revival, well directed by Jonathan Silverstein and with moving performances by Matt Servitto, Keir Dullea, and Marsha Mason. Overall grade: A

Everyday Rapture, co-written by Dick Scanlan and the show’s star Sherie Rene Scott, is in the vein of a Bette Midler revue, with songs strung together via a storyline very roughly based on its star’s somewhat bizarre life story. Entertaining up to a point, but not enough to warrant all of the fuss and the Tony nominations it has received. Overall grade: B

The Kid, a musical about a gay couple seeking to adopt a baby, written by Michael Zam, Andy Monroe, and Jack Lechner, was a pleasure through-and-through, funny, warm, and touching. Hope it has a long, healthy, and happy life. Overall grade: A

The Aliens, about a trio of social misfits, is the second show of the season by Annie Baker, a marvelous young playwright. Overall grade: A

Dr. Knock, or the Triumph of Medicine, a 1923 satire about the medical profession, written by Jules Romains, was given a first-rate revival by the Mint Theater Company, which specializes in producing rarely-seen old gems. Overall grade: A

The Burnt Part Boys, a musical by Mariana Elder, Nathan Tysen, and Chris Miller, about a group of teenagers on a quest to destroy a mine where their fathers had died ten years previously, falls flat on many counts, not the least of which is the lack of attention to capturing the place and time where it is set. Overall grade: C

White’s Lies by Ben Andron is a cross between a sit-com and a farce, about a middle-aged man-who-has-yet-to-grow-up who gets into all sorts of trouble after promising his mother a grandchild before what seems to be her imminent death. Nice to see Betty Buckley back on stage. Overall grade: B

Graceland by Ellen Fairey was the story of a brother and sister who get together for the funeral of their father, along with a parallel and intersecting story about a divorced father and his teenage son. Well acted and well written by another playwright worth keeping an eye on. Overall grade: A-

Sondheim on Sondheim, the umpteenth tribute show for the octogenarian Broadway composer, offers lackluster performances of many Sondheim songs, some of them discards or alternate versions to ones that made it to the original cast albums. Of greater interest to Sondheim’s fans are the multimedia presentations of the master himself providing a running narrative and some revealing personal stories. Overall grade: B

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, by Kristoffer Diaz, is a vibrant and original entry to the theater season. It combines a hip-hop sensibility with a wild and crazy story about the world of professional wrestling and its xenophobic environment. Overall grade: A

That Face by Polly Stenham is an over-the-top dark comedy about a highly dysfunctional family, featuring a drug-dependent, booze-hound of a mother and her co-dependent teenage son. Stenham was still a teenager herself when she penned this cutting work and is someone who bears watching over time. Overall grade: B

White Woman Street by Sebastian Barry, a playwright, poet, and novelist whose work was unfamiliar to me before now, tells the tale of a group of outlaws in 1916 fixing to rob a train in the town of White Woman Street. Another triumph for the Irish Rep. Overall grade: A

We end, as promised with another of Donald Margulies’ plays. With the current production of Collected Stories, Margulies should thank his lucky stars to have Linda Lavin in the central role of Ruth Steiner. This is one of the richest roles that Margulies has created, and with Lavin, he has found the perfect person to portray the writer and teacher who gradually is overcome by a sense of being both surpassed and betrayed by her student. I have some quibbles with the play itself, which gets a bit essay-like towards the end, but none with Lavin, who is giving one of the very best performances of the season. Overall grade: A

That’s it for the spring semester. My next blog entry will ignore the various awards that have been given out recently, as well as the forthcoming Tonys, and offer up my own Kudos for the best of the best.

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

Wrapping Up A Year of Theatergoing. Part I: Fall Semester

Forget for the moment how the New York “season” is defined. I’d like to use this occasion to review my own season of theatergoing in 2009-2010, with a few brief comments about each of the shows I’ve seen between September of 2009 and May of 2010—a span of time roughly equivalent to an academic year at a college, whence comes my blog identity of “ProfMiller” and my pressing inner need to assign a letter grade to each production.

Here, more-or-less in the order of my seeing them, are the plays in my 2009-2010 season of theater-going. Part I: Fall Semester.

We’ll begin with Superior Donuts by Tracy Letts, the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of August: Osage County. With Superior Donuts, only Jon Michael Hill succeeded in taking an unconvincing and underdeveloped character and filling the role with a vibrant performance that stood out against the general ennui pervading the rest of the evening. For that, Hill has garnered a Tony Award nomination for best performance by a featured actor in a play. Overall grade: C+

Wishful Drinking was an intermittently amusing evening spent with Carrie Fisher telling stories of her dysfunctional life. I was looking for her to share something she might have learned from her affair with alcohol and drugs, and any insights she may have gained from years of psychotherapy, but this one was played strictly for the gallows humor of it all. Overall grade: B-

Brighton Beach Memoirs was a warm, affectionate, funny, well-acted, well-directed and thoroughly enjoyable revival of Neil Simon’s semi-autobiographical comedy. I join all of those were puzzled that it failed to catch on and had to close prematurely. Overall grade: A

The Royal Family, a spoof of the Barrymore family of actors by George S. Kauffman and Edna Ferber, was given a first-class production. Great to see that Jan Maxwell, a wonderful comic actress in the Jean Harlow screwball mode, won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play and is nominated for a Tony. Overall Grade: A

After Miss Julie, playwright Patrick Marber’s take on August Strindberg’s play about power, social class, and sex, had its moments, and Sienna Miller pulled off a fairly credible performance as the psychologically complicated title character. But the production was too far over-the-top to be truly convincing or engaging. Overall grade: C

Oleanna, a revival of David Mamet’s take on power, gender, and sex, also had its moments, and Julie Stiles gave a strong performance as a young woman college student who accuses a professor of sexual harassment and pretty much destroys his career. The play depends more on the unfolding of the storyline and less on the eloquence of the dialog, of which Mamet, when he is at his best, is a supreme master. Here he was not at his best. Overall grade: B-

Broke-ology, by Nathan Louis Jackson, was a well-written, well-performed drama about a working class African American family in which two grown sons are trying to figure out how best to help their aging and ailing father. Jackson is skilled at layering depth of meaning, and by paying attention, we learn a great deal about the family and of the greater world beyond the front steps of their modest home. Overall grade: A-

Two Unrelated Plays by David Mamet consisted of one very short piece, School, that was funny, clever, and reminiscent of top-notch Mamet; and a longer one-act, Keep Your Pantheon, an amusing spin on Plautus and reminiscent of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Overall grade: B+

Finian’s Rainbow, a revival of the 1947 Burton Lane/Yip Harburg musical, was a lively and delightful production of a show filled with glorious and memorable songs, even if the tale it tells stretches credibility to the breaking point. There were several fine performances, but it was Kate Baldwin who carried the show, winning my heart and a well-deserved Tony nomination for best performance by a leading actress in a musical. Overall grade: A-

The Emperor Jones was the Irish Rep’s outstanding revival of Eugene O’Neill’s play about a two-bit dictator who ends up fleeing for his life. For a play generally viewed as musty and racially insensitive, this was a brilliant production, using mime, choreographed movement, masks, puppets, lighting, and music to stellar effect, and anchored by the powerful performance by John Douglas Thompson in the title role. Overall grade: A+.

Penny Pennyworth, by Chris Weikel, was an enjoyable romp, a spoof of any number of Charles Dickens tomes performed by an energetic and delightful cast of four, all of whom played multiple roles. Overall Grade: A-

Danny and Sylvia: The Danny Kaye Musical, by Robert McElwaine and Bob Bain, is of interest only to diehard fans of Danny Kaye. Brian Childers offers up an impressive impression of the neurotic comic, but this is strictly bio-pic stuff. Overall grade: C

Zero Hour, written and performed by Jim Brochu, is a one-man show about the life of actor Zero Mostel. Brochu has deservedly won a Drama Desk Award for his performance, the best solo I’ve seen since Jefferson Mays' brilliant star turn in I Am My Own Wife. Overall grade: A+

Race was the third production of a play by David Mamet during the fall season. Unfortunately, it offered only a tepid discussion (in this case, of the sticky nature of relations between whites and African Americans in the U.S.) without the longed-for stomach punch that Mamet has given us with such plays as Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-Plow, and, to a lesser extent, Oleanna. Overall grade: C

Fela, with book by Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones, was based on the life, work, and music of Nigerian Afrobeat club owner and performer Fela Kuti. All kudos to Bill T. Jones for his directing and choreography, and to Sahr Ngaujah and Lillias White for their roles as Fela and his mother. Wonderful and original show, well deserving of its 11 Tony nominations. Overall grade: A+

Toxic Avenger, book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro and music by David Bryan, was a total hoot. Saw it twice and would gladly see it again! Overall grade: A+

Circle Mirror Transformation was one of two new plays by Annie Baker to be presented Off Broadway this season. 2010 Obie Award winner Baker tops my list of rising young playwrights! Overalll grade: A+

This, by Melissa James Gibson, paired with Circle Mirror Transformation, gave Playwrights Horizons a very strong fall season. Gibson gave us grown up characters edging into early middle age and trying to cope with life’s little blessings (a new baby) and curses (the death of a spouse). Overall grade: A-

The Playboy of the Western World, by J. M. Synge, and Misalliance, by G. B. Shaw, were given rousing productions by the Pearl Theater Company at its new home at City Center. Pearl is rightly noted for its classy presentations of classic plays. Overall grade for both shows: A

Ernest In Love, a musical version of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest (Ann Croswell, book and lyrics; Lee Pockriss, music) was a small, charming musical presented by the Irish Rep. Overall grade: B

Ragtime (book by Terrance McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, music by Stephen Flaherty) was a very good revival, with strong performances throughout. But other than the iconic opening number, there was precious little to celebrate with the frustratingly thin retelling of E.L. Doctorow’s powerful book. Why bother? Overall grade: B

That’s it for the fall semester. My next blog entry will cover my play-going activities from January through May of 2010.

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

Two new shows: One warm and inviting, the other smarmy and farcical

Aficionados of edgy plays about the angst-filled lives of sophisticated, cynical, and smarmy characters should skip down to my review of White’s Lies below. First, I want to talk about a new show that has likeable characters, a situation that is thoroughly engaging, and a script that is both laugh-out-loud funny and moist-eyed touching.

The show is The Kid, a musical about a gay couple hoping to adopt a baby, now playing at the Acorn Theater at Theater Row on 42nd Street.

That the couple in question is gay is, of course, germane, but one of the many strengths of The Kid is that it tells a universal story about two people who have made the commitment to bring a child into their lives, and the challenges they face trying to make it happen.

If it were not so well done, it would be easy to dismiss The Kid as a live version of a made-for-television movie you might see on the Lifetime Channel, or perhaps more likely on Logo, the TV network that shows Lifetime-like gay themed movies. A couple wants a child, works through an adoption agency, goes through some anxious moments, seeks the support of friends and family, and so forth (“and so forth” being my way of saying I am not going to tell you how it ends).

The Kid is based on the book by the same title, written by popular sex advice columnist Dan Savage. Savage has been transformed into the lead character in the musical by writer Michael Zam, supported with songs by Andy Monroe (music) and Jack Lechner (lyrics) that build our understanding of and connection with the characters over the course of the show.

Gotta hand it to director Scott Elliott, someone whose work I have to confess I never particularly admired before now, and to a wonderful cast, starting with Christopher Sieber, he of the beer belly, teddy bear personality, and facial expression of borderline panic as he deals with the everyday crises of life, both the real and the feared. Sieber plays the lead role of Dan, whose protective mantra is: “babies are born dead; birth mothers can change their minds.” The line is, of course, not funny, but it says much about the character of Dan and of the anxiety that undercuts his dream of parenthood.

It would take a real curmudgeon not to grow quite fond of Dan and his partner Terry (Lucas Steele), Dan’s practical and supportive mom (Jill Eikenberry), and Melissa, the homeless teenage birth mother (Jeannine Frumess, in a strong and layered performance). The rest of the cast, many of whom play multiple roles, are also quite good, and the whole of the show has a real ensemble feel to it.

Bottom line: I arrived at the theater tired and cranky after a frustrating day at work. Before long, I found myself caught up in the show as events unfolded onstage, and I left feeling uplifted and warm. Works for me!

OK. Now on to the edgy comedy about the angst-filled lives of sophisticated, cynical, and smarmy characters.

It’s called White’s Lies, and it is the first play by motion picture marketer Ben Andron, who has given us a mixture of sit-com and farce that more-or-less works if you think of it in those terms. Thus, the play offers us TV comedy situations, and characters who speak in snappy one-liners and who perform with the rapid pacing of a light-weight farce, under the direction of Bob Cline.

The storyline: Womanizer Joe White (Tuc Watkins) has made a career of picking up women in bars and telling them all manner of lies as they head out for a night of debauchery. Joe’s mom (Betty Buckley), from whom Joe has been estranged, tells him she has terminal cancer and wants nothing more than for him to present her with a grandchild before she dies. The plot unfolds as Joe tries to spin a web of lies that will restore him to his mother’s good graces. Along the way, he learns a few lessons about life and grows up just a little bit.

The play is abetted by some good comic performances by supporting players Rena Strober, Jimmy Ray Bennett, and, especially, Peter Scolari, who earned his sit-com chops of such television fare as "Bosom Buddies" and "Newhart."

White’s Lies has not been well received by the critics, but in my view Ben Andron shows some skill and reminds me somewhat of Douglas Carter Beane, who has given us a couple of funny offbeat comedies, As Bees in Honey Drown and The Little Dog Laughed. Andron is not yet writing at that level, but I would say that White’s Lies works better than Beane’s most recent outing, Mr. and Mrs. Fitch, and I would like to see what else he is capable of.

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

The Burnt Part Boys: Earnestness is Not Nearly Enough

The best thing about The Burnt Part Boys, now in previews at the Playwrights Horizons, is its evocative title. Unfortunately, the musical itself, which has been in development for at least four years, has little to offer by way of script, lyrics, or music—kind of a difficult set of obstacles to overcome.

It’s not that wonderful theater can’t happen with a modicum of plot. Waiting for Godot comes to mind, as does the current production of The Aliens at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. But both Samuel Beckett’s classic play and Annie Baker’s contemporary one engage an audience because the characters are intensely engaging, as are the words that come out of their mouths courtesy of the playwrights.

In The Burnt Part Boys, however, playwright Mariana Elder and Lyricist Nathan Tysen have not succeeded. The storyline, while earnest as can be, just doesn’t make for interesting theater. Neither Elder nor Tysen shows a mastery of language to convincingly express the thoughts of the characters, a group of teenagers, one of whom leads the others in a quest to dynamite a coalmine where two of their fathers were killed a decade earlier. [The title refers to the name the locals started calling the mine after the disaster, which occurred in 1952 in West Virginia coal country.]

All of Act I and much of Act II concerns the long journey to the mine site, which is about to be reopened despite a pledge by the owner to keep it permanently shut in memorial to those who died there. So you do have the makings of a quest story or a bildungsroman, in which you might expect great truths to be revealed and friendships to be either cemented or destroyed. Yet little that unfolds in The Burnt Part Boys leaves the realm of the mundane.

I don’t want to beat the show to death, yet there is little to praise. What I can offer goes to the minimalist set by designer Brian Prather, using ropes and ladders to portray the rugged terrain, and the score by Chris Miller that shows some potential in the modernist style of Adam Guettel or Michael John LaChiusa.

As for the performances, let’s just say that even talented thirty-something actors who look and act like thirty-something characters should not be playing 18-year-olds, and characters living in West Virginia coal mining country in 1962 should talk like that’s where and when they are living. In the case of The Burnt Part Boys, I absolve all of the actors and hope they go on to find roles that allow them to display their talent to better advantage.

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

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!

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

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."

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

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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