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!!!



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‘King Lear’: The Play’s The Thing to Celebrate With the Splendid Frank Langella in the Lead

Frank Langella as King Lear

When you think about it, the title really does say it all.

Shakespeare called his play King Lear—not The Former King Lear, or King Lear, Retired.  And therein lies the key to understanding the declawed lion who at turns is regal, miserable, nasty, confused, and pitiable. 

We all know the outline of the plot: an elderly king abdicates, intending to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, presumably to insure the peaceful transfer of power to the next generation.  But, of course, from the moment he moves to bring this about, problems arise, brought on by his failure to understand the personal and political ramifications of his actions.  

King Lear is a very complex play, with multiple characters who are complex in their own right.  In addition there is a varying shift of tone that can be confusing.  Parts of the play read as very Elizabethan, while others take on the blood-lust-and-greed qualities of Jacobean drama.  As an aside, I’ll mention that such a duality also is evident in Timon of Athens, written at approximately the same time and about which it has been speculated that Shakespeare shared the writing credits with Thomas Middleton, a master of Jacobean gore. 

Whether King Lear is the work of Shakespeare alone or the result of a collaboration, I’ll leave to the scholars to fight over. Regardless, I will say that reading the play can certainly be a challenge, not only with the conflicting styles but also with the inclusion of characters who have similar-sounding names (Edgar and Edmund), or who shift into different roles that come and go (Edgar and “Poor Tom”), or who are pretty much interchangeable (Goneril and Regan).  And, for that matter, do we really need both the noble Kent and the noble Gloucester to make the point? 

Thankfully, with a good production such as the one now on view at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater, King Lear is much easier to comprehend (though I’ll confess I’m still not having much luck differentiating Goneril from Regan).  A strong cast, with several standouts, along with sharp directing by Angus Jackson, help keep the audience glued to the action for the three-hour running time. 

But, of course, everything hangs on the actor in the title role.  And what a thrill it is to watch Frank Langella, at the age of 76, as he wrestles with and ultimately conquers the highly demanding and exhausting portrayal of this great mythic personality. 

There are many ways to interpret the role of King Lear.  Here Mr. Langella gives us a Lear who has known nothing but deference to his every whim for most of his life, like some protected pop star surrounded always by his fawning entourage.

That he expects to maintain his regal lifestyle after giving up the throne makes perfect sense. That he fails to understand his daughters also makes perfect sense as well, for who would expect an all-powerful king to have been closely involved in the lives of his offspring?  It follows, as well, that whatever obeisance they may owe him, expecting filial love from any of his daughters (including, yes, Cordelia) is to seek what is not possible.

Thus Regan (Lauren O'Neil) and Goneril (Catherine McCormack) proffer false and formalized words of love at Lear’s behest in order to get what they want. Their younger sister, Cordelia (Isabella Laughland), either out of honesty or naiveté, is more straightforward in the speech that sets off Lear’s downward spiral:  “I love your majesty according to my bond; nor more nor less.”

The explosion triggered by Cordelia’s words marks the beginning of the end, as Lear disinherits her on the spot and ties his anticipated retirement years to the mercies of the other two—a foolish misjudgment that, coupled with a deepening mental fog associated with senility, lead to his utter and complete descent into the nothingness that only mere mortals would recognize as the closing arc of life.

Wondrous it is to watch Langella as he shapes the rise and fall of Lear’s descent through anger, hurt, sadness, despair, unbridled rage, and, eventually, periods of gentleness, understanding, and acceptance until the very end. 

Through his journey, he is aided by his fellow actors, especially Denis Conway (marvelous as Gloucester) and by Steven Pacey as Kent, both of whom have a terrific grasp of their roles and of performing Shakespeare.  Harry Melling as the Fool, and Sebastian Armesto in the dual role of Edgar/Poor Tom are both very good as well.  And while I could live without the onstage rainstorm (a bit of technological magic that seems overindulgent), the production itself is well-conceived and generally unfussy.

Whether you are a connoisseur of King Lear or you have yet to see a production, this is certainly a good one to attend, if only for the first-class performance by Mr. Langella. 

On the other hand, you might want to wait out the cold of winter to see what the Theater for a New Audience has in store at its new home right around the corner from the Harvey.  Its version of King Lear, starring Michael Pennington, begins March 14 and runs to May 4.

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'Hamlet' and 'Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern' in Rep: Gutsy Productions by The Seeing Place

Voyeurism, simplified.

That is the motto of The Seeing Place, one of those amazing up-and-coming shoestring-budget theater companies that manage to pull off compelling and gutsy productions of challenging plays in various pockets of the city.

I first encountered The Seeing Place, now completing its fourth year of inventive work, when it mounted a thoroughly engaging and insightful production of John Osborne’s Look Back In Anger—much more engaging and insightful, I might add, than the more recent Roundabout rage fest starring Matthew Rhys. 

Now the gang at The Seeing Place have taken on the daunting task of performing, in rotating rep, a pair of theatrical masterworks:  Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Tom Stoppard’s absurdist take on Hamlet, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.   

Same actors taking on the same roles in both plays, with at least some performances of both plays being presented on the same day.  Not unprecedented (Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests comes to mind), but still—what a tour-de-stamina for the actors. 

I thought of this while sitting in the stifling heat of the Sargent Theater on the fourth floor of the American Theatre of Actors on West 54^th Street this past weekend, while watching an undoubtedly sweltering troupe of dedicated performers act their hearts out.  (By now, a promised new air conditioning unit will have been installed, and last week’s heat wave dissipated, so both performers and audiences should be having a better time of it.) 

Of the two plays, it is Hamlet that fares better.  And given The Seeing Place’s emphasis on collaborative actor-driven productions, it makes sense that this would be the case.  Hamlet is an actor’s play, with each iconic role open to and able to support a wide range of interpretations.  

The production is dominated, as it should be, by the title character, here played with Ethan Hawke-like gusto by The Seeing Place’s founding artistic director Brandon Walker.  Mr. Walker brings out all of Hamlet’s neurotic indecision and pretty much erases the distinction between the character’s feigned madness and actual madness.  He is a charismatic and compelling actor, who brings to fruition the company’s motto (voyeurism, simplified) and draws the audience into his world. 

Of the rest of the cast, standouts include the company’s managing director Erin Cronican as an overprotected and vulnerable Ophelia; Jason Wilson and Janice Hall as the self-deluding and, apparently, quite-fond-of-drink King Claudius and Queen Gertrude; and David Arthur Bachrach, who nicely shows off his classical acting chops in the roles of the Ghost, the Player King, and Gravedigger I. 

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is a far more difficult play to pull off.  It really does call for a strong directorial hand from someone with a real understanding of the requirements of Theater of the Absurd, which too often falls into the mode of theater of the “absurd” (not the same thing.) When done well, the results can be nothing short of a breathtaking journey into a surrealistic world.  For example, quite possibly the best production of any play I have ever seen was that of Ionesco’s The Chairs, as it was done to utter perfection and with great attention to detail by the Théâtre de Complicité in London about 15 years ago. 

But this is not generally the norm with productions of absurdist plays.  At last weekend’s performance of the Stoppard play, The Seeing Place company appeared to still be working through its approach, and there was rather too much of the absurd (as in silliness) and not enough of the Absurd's alternative reality for my taste.  Since the company puts a premium on allowing its actors “the freedom to discover the story with the audience,” it is likely they will find a stronger footing before the run is through. 

Meanwhile, if you agree with Shakespeare that “the play’s the thing,” I’d recommend an evening with Hamlet.  (Just check ahead of time to make sure the air conditioning is working!)

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