Tennessee Williams' Final Play: Much That Is Outrageous, Little That Is Austere

Poster by Noah Scalin

There are many pleasures to be found within the drug-addled fog of Tennessee Williams’ final and previously unproduced play, In Masks Outrageous and Austere, now having its world premiere at Culture Project.

This may not be the Williams of The Glass Menagerie or A Streetcar Named Desire, but I am happy to report that it is also not the Williams of The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, The Seven Descents of Myrtle, or Out Cry—to cite three others of his late plays that I saw in their original productions, all of which were leaden and pretentiously thick with “meaning.” 

With Masks, which has seen a number of tinkering hands since Williams’ death in 1983 (among them, Gore Vidal’s and Peter Bogdonovich’s), the playwright joins such writers as Edward Albee, John Guare, and Tony Kushner, who—with varying degrees of success—have attempted to mix elements of realism, surrealism, and absurdism into their work. I, for one, think he was on to something. 

I give a lot of credit to director David Schweizer, who recently helmed the intriguing, moving, and, yes, surreal revival of Rinde Eckert’s And God Created Great Whales (also for Culture Project). 

Schweizer has done an admirable job of pulling together the disparate elements of what you could never call a linear or clearly plotted play.  Instead, guided by the director’s sure hand, In Masks Outrageous and Austere invites us enter a world that owes much of its logic to pharmacological enhancement.  If you can accept that, you are in for a most interesting evening, filled with mystery, intrigue, corporate greed, paranoia, and murder—along with a surprising amount of humor and glorious turns of phrase. 

As we enter the theater, we find ourselves surrounded by LED screens and two-way mirrors, along with a sound system that is pumping out electronic music and bits of seemingly random dialog, while several Men-In-Black types move robotically about, speaking into headsets.

I have to say, my initial response was that this was a lot of smoke and (literally) mirrors designed to cover up the obvious flaws in what would turn out to be yet another dreary late Williams play.  Yet in Schweizer’s able hands, these elements greatly enhance the experience. 

The voices and the music and the images with which we are initially bombarded create a representation of what it must be like to have Attention Deficit Disorder, an apt metaphor for a play in which the main character is described as having “eyes blazin’ with Ritalin.” 

If you make the effort to filter out some of the noise, you will hear the voices going through a checklist of props needed for the play.  Among the calls for martini glasses and baseball caps, you will hear this exchange:

“Eyedrops.”

“Check.”

“Revolver.”

“Check.”

“Bullets.”

“Check.”

And so it begins.

The play opens, and we are…where?  None of the main characters seems to know—not Babe, the “richest woman in the world,” nor her much younger current husband Billy, a “distinguished minor poet,” as Babe calls him, nor Billy‘s much younger lover Jerry.  They have been whisked off to some secret location, where they are being watched over by a retinue of those Men-In-Black types, collectively referred to as “Gideons.” 

Since the audience is not presented with much of a roadmap to understanding what follows, allow me the indulgence of constructing my own meaning.

I take it that Babe’s status and image as the figurehead overseer of her late husband’s super-ultra-mega-global business conglomerate is being threatened by the very existence of Billy and Jerry, and that the Gideons have been dispatched to see to it that things are returned to the status quo.  Keeping Babe in an alcohol-and-drug-induced fog is essential to carrying out the plan; as Babe herself points out,  “A firearm in the hands of the demented should not be disregarded.” 

Think of all of this corporate intrigue as taking place on the outskirts of the play, while the action within is filtered through Babe’s befuddled and manipulated mind.  Here is where things get messy.  But if you are willing to go along for the ride, there’s a lot of fun to be had, what with the goings-on of Babe’s inattentive attendant Peg Foyle, Peg’s hunky boyfriend Joey, and, especially, “Mrs. Gorse dash Bracken from the invisible house next door” (yet another bon mot from Babe, who gets to relay many of Williams’ better linguistic creations). 

It’s OK to laugh.  This is funny stuff. 

At the performance I attended, veteran actress Shirley Knight, who during previews reportedly had trouble recalling her lines, nailed them—or perhaps wove any hesitations into the personality of her character—and she does splendidly as Babe, striving as best she can to make sense out of the nonsense that has become her world.  And don’t kid yourself; sober or un, Babe is no babe in the woods, but someone to be reckoned with. 

The rest of the cast members do equally well:  Robert Beitzel as the neurasthenic Billy, Sam Underwood as Jerry (with little enough to do beyond standing around and looking cute), Pamela Shaw as Peg, and Christopher Hallday as Joey. 

But it is Alison Fraser as Mrs. Gorse-Bracken (what a great name!) who truly embodies the goofy logic of the play. In spirit a character from Alice In Wonderland, she wanders in and out towing along or chasing after her mentally challenged and libido-driven son Playboy (Connor Buckley).  Things always liven up when she is at hand, regardless of the tenuous connection between what she says and whatever else is going on. 

You can also sense Williams getting quite a chuckle out of setting the play in a beach house of the mind, where one can take a warm ocean swim and watch the aurora borealis at the same time.  And, given the playwright’s predilection for hotel living, you can imagine the hallucinatory coming-into-being of the Gideons (all of those Bibles in all of those hotel rooms!)  If that’s not enough, the director himself has added still more elements, including video appearances by Buck Henry and Austin Pendleton, as contacts from the outside world. 

By the way, the title of the play comes from a poem by Elinor Wylie, "Now Let No Charitable Hope," which ends:

In masks outrageous and austere

The years go by in single file;

But none has merited my fear,

And none has quite escaped my smile.

It is the smile that lingers.  All in all, In Masks Outrageous and Austere is a boldly conceived and quite enjoyable theatrical experience.  And I ain’t just whistling “Dixie,” a remark that is relevant but which I believe I will leave unexplained.

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A Solid 'Streetcar' With A Resilient Blanche DuBois at Its Core

Cast of "Streetcar": Wood Harris, Nicole Ari Parker, Blair Underwood, and Daphne Rubin-Vega

Blanche DuBois is evolving.

Or maybe the way we view her is evolving.

This is what I found myself thinking while watching the compelling new production of Tennessee Williams’ 1947 masterwork, A Streetcar Named Desire, now in previews at the Broadhurst Theatre.

Streetcar, under the deft direction of Emily Mann, features a multiracial cast of actors who are well on their way to making this American classic their own.  

This is more than “color blind” or “gimmick” casting; Williams himself envisioned a multiracial production, and one was in the works as early as 1958. It certainly makes sense for a play that takes place in that most culturally diverse of cities, New Orleans. 

Ms. Mann has chosen her players well, down to the smallest roles, including a welcome return to the stage for Carmen de Lavallade, the ageless dancer/actress who, as it so happens, is the daughter of Creole parents from New Orleans. Just watch her strut her stuff as part of the jazz funeral procession that opens the second act! 

Going against the tide of packing a play with sure-fire ticket selling big names (the current star-studded production of The Best Man comes to mind), this Streetcar brings us an ensemble of solid but generally lesser-known actors, mostly identified with television and film work. 

Blair Underwood--who perhaps comes closest to providing a name recognition factor—oozes earthy charm, sexual frisson, and violent rage in equal measure as the brutish Stanley.  “Every man’s a king—and I’m the King around here!” he snarls at his wife Stella, and he means it, even during those moments when he shows a dram of remorse for his abusive behavior.  He may seem at first to be a toothless braggadocio, but best beware; cross him at your peril.

Daphne Rubin-Vega, as the battered Stella, gives us a woman who is determined to live with the choices she has made and to fit herself into her husband’s rough-and-tumble world, a far cry from the genteel upbringing she and her sister Blanche knew when growing up on what was left of the family’s planation, Belle Reve.

If Belle Reve is the DuBois sisters’ Tara, Blanche DuBois is the one who most resembles Scarlett O’Hara.  Not the bubble-headed “fiddle-dee-dee” Scarlett, but the one who has learned how to fend for herself when those she has relied upon to take care of her have failed to do so, the Scarlett who declares, “If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.”

There are, of course, many ways to play Blanche. She is one of the most richly imagined and complex characters in the history of American theater, the role of a lifetime for many an actress.  It was only a couple of years ago that Cate Blanchett headed up a production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music that theater critic Ben Brantley of The New York Times called “heart-stopping.” 

So, what a gutsy move it was to pin this iconic role on Nicole Ari Parker, an actress with little theatrical experience who is probably best known as a fashion model and for her role in the Showtime television series, “Soul Food,” dating back eight years now.

Gutsy and smart, as it turns out. Because Ms. Parker has sunk her teeth into the role, and has come up with a Blanche who has evolved considerably from the image of a wounded butterfly, passive and half-lost in illusions and dreams. 

Instead, she gives us a strong and resilient woman who has managed to survive a lifetime of blows by taking matters into her own hands. It may be true that she wants magic, as she famously declares, but look at the entire speech:  “I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don't tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth.” 

This Blanche knows full well what she is doing, and that the magic she craves doesn’t happen of its own accord.  When, for example, she covers a bare lightbulb with a paper lantern, she says, ”Oh look, we have created enchantment.” 

Despite her desire for a kinder, gentler world, Ms. Parker’s Blanche never for a moment forgets or brushes off the ugliness she has had to endure. 

Here she is explaining to a demanding and suspicious Stanley how it is she has come to lose Belle Reve:  “There are thousands of papers, stretching back over hundreds of years, affecting Belle Reve as, piece by piece, our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications…”

And here she is freely admitting to Mitch, her erstwhile beau (well played by Wood Harris with a mixture of naiveté and disdain) of her life after she lost Belle Reve:  “I stayed at a hotel called the Tarantula Arms. Yes, a big spider. That's where I brought my victims. Yes, I've had many meetings with strangers.”

She doesn’t even balk at telling the saddest tale of all, an act of cruelty she committed when she was young and dewy-eyed, which led to devastating consequences for which she will never ever forgive herself.  


I have to tell you, there were audible gasps from the audience more than once, and not just at the brutal act that occurs late in the play.  Yet it is Ms. Parker's portrait of a woman who endures that has the ability to resonate with audiences. 


Even after being horribly violated and summarily removed into psychiatric lock-up, there is every reason to imagine Blanche will return.  For it is not only her uncanny ability to rely on "the kindness of strangers" that will rescue her, but her unshakable faith that--to quote dear Scarlett--"Tomorrow is another day!"

This Streetcar may not be heart-stopping, but it is honest and powerful, and, unlike so many recent revivals of Tennessee Williams' plays,  it genuinely respects the playwright's exquisite use of language and imagery.   


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Why You Should Avoid 'End of the Rainbow,' And Why You Should Ignore What I Just Said

Tracie Bennett as Judy Garland

It’s only fair to warn you, before I explain why you really should see it, that there are plenty of problems with End of the Rainbow, the British import that takes place during several weeks of a singing gig by Judy Garland, just months before her death in 1969.

Let me tick them off:

Peter Quilter’s play belabors the obvious, what you might expect from a run-of-the-mill bio about the downward spiral of a life shattered by addictions to booze, pills, cigarettes, men, and the unquenchable need to be loved by an adoring public.

In case you just happened to wander into the theater and cannot quite recall who Judy Garland was, Mr. Quilter is there to lend a hand.  He provides enough jokes about “munchkins” and “yellow brick roads” and remarks about “Sid” (Luft, husband #3 and father of singer Lorna Luft) and “Vincent,” (Minnelli, #2 and father of Liza) to jolt your memory.   

There are also predictable references to the fact that among Ms. Garland’s fan base are a fair number of gay men, represented in the play by her pianist Anthony (Michael Cumpsty).  Anthony idolizes the Judy Garland image, if not necessarily the person herself; when he looks at her, all he can see is Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz, Esther Smith from Meet Me in St. Louis, and Vicki Lester from A Star Is Born.  Be still my beating heart!

Later, when it comes time to report on Ms. Garland’s death—something that shouldn’t come as too much of a shocker (Hint:  What is the play’s title?)—it falls upon Anthony to solemnly make the announcement directly to the audience.  This is, believe me, not the kind of play where breaking the “fourth wall” is de rigueur.

The other main character is Judy’s new business manager and husband-#5-to-be, Mickey Deans (Tom Pelphrey), portrayed in the play as short-tempered and controlling, a Svengali who withholds drugs and alcohol from Judy and then later feeds them to her, as it serves his purpose—which is to hold her together long enough to fulfill her performing obligation, a five-week run at London’s The Talk of the Town.

OK.  If you are still with me, you are probably wondering why I am about to say that none of this matters very much, and that you would be doing yourself a big favor by seeing End of the Rainbow. 

The answer lies in the astonishing performance of Tracie Bennett as Judy Garland.

I can think of few instances where actors have thrown themselves into a role with such intensity, with such ferocity, as Ms. Bennett displays from the moment she enters the scene until her post-curtain call song. 

True, she doesn’t really look like Ms. Garland, and she doesn’t really sound like her—there are more than enough Garland impersonators out there who can give you these things—yet she manages to embody Ms. Garland in a way that is jaw-dropping. 

When the play opens, in a suite of the London Ritz Hotel (beautiful set, by the way, by William Dudley, who is also responsible for the costumes), Ms. Bennett enters the room like an over-the-top diva, surrounded by her many pieces of luggage and complaining about how tiny the suite is, fit only for midgets (or munchkins!).     

During this opening scene, I was unimpressed.  Ms. Bennett’s acting reminded me more of an Al Hirshfeld caricature than a character.  But it didn’t take me too long to realize that this was a deliberate pose—Judy Garland playing the role of the “legendary Judy Garland,” despite the fact that she was broke and all-but-broken in so many ways in both her career and her personal life.   

As the play progressed, I became more and more enthralled with the tour-de-force acting.  Ms. Bennett takes the clichés that the playwright has written for her and turns them into an extraordinarily complicated person, segueing in the blink of an eye from anxiety-ridden bundle of raw nerves, to ingratiating cadger of drugs, to consummate crowd pleaser, to shameless manipulator. 

You should see her when she gets her hands on some medication that is meant to be used on a dog, or when she uses her self-deprecating humor both to cover up her own pain and to charm others.  She is a walking id, with no superego to hold her in check, someone who lives life as if there were nothing left to lose. 

This is what Ms. Bennett gives us, along with a singing style that evokes Judy Garland after she had reached that place where the way in which she sold a song to an audience far outweighed the minor detail that her singing voice was a ragged remnant of what it once was.  

There is a sense of desperation in every move she makes, but Ms. Bennett gives us a Judy Garland who is hell-bent both on immolating herself and on rising from the ashes—until that is no longer possible.

This is a truly memorable, a truly magnificent performance.  Brava, brava, and yet again brava!




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Lost (and Found) in Yonkers

The boys greet Grandma Kurnitz.  Photo by Stephen Kunken

Nobody likes Grandma Kurnitz, and it’s not hard to figure why.  She is a curmudgeon’s curmudgeon, tough and mean-spirited as they come, the steely controlling center of Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers, now in view in a first-rate revival by The Actors Company Theatre company (TACT) at Theatre Row’s Beckett Theatre

Lost in Yonkers first appeared on Broadway in 1991, five years after the final play in what is sometimes referred to as the “Eugene Triology” (Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and Broadway Bound). 

Anyone with knowledge of those earlier works will find some elements of Lost in Yonkers that seem familiar.  Like its predecessors, this is a coming-of-age story, featuring, in this instance, not one but two precocious teenage boys.  And, as you might expect, it also includes lots of clever Simonesque wisecracks. 

What makes Lost in Yonkers a richer work is the sense that you are being given an inside look at a very real and troubled family, with enough unpredictable turns to keep it from becoming yet another Simon saga of a World War II-era family, an affectionate but not quite believable sugared memoir that covers up the scary parts. 

Lost in Yonkers begins with a visit to Grandma Kurnitz (Cynthia Harris, co-artistic director of TACT) by her anxious widowed son Eddie (Dominic Comperatore), with his boys, Jay (Matthew Gummley) and Arty (Russell Posner), in tow.  Eddie has had little to do with his mother for many years, and she has seen her grandsons—now 15 and 13—only a handful of times. Nevertheless, Eddie has come crawling back to the family home in order to beg his mother to let the boys stay with her for the better part of a year.  He needs to go away to earn the money to pay back the loan shark who had covered his wife’s final medical expenses, and he has nowhere else to turn.

With this setup, It does seem that we can expect the inevitable march toward a happy family ending, in which the boys and their grandmother learn to appreciate one another.  But Simon either abandoned that path or intended another one all along.  For while Jay and Arty are still significant players, they become observers and commentators, while the meat of the play examines Grandma Kurnitz and the still-festering wounds she has caused to her now-grown children. In addition to Eddie, we spend time with his sisters Bella (Finnerty Steeves) and Gert (Stephanie Cozart), and their brother Louie (Alec Beard)—all of whom have spent their lives living in fear of their mother’s icy hold over them and all of whom have been damaged in different ways.

When one character says of Grandma Kurnitz, who owns and runs a candy story beneath her immaculately ordered apartment, that “she’d know if salt was missing from a pretzel,” you are invited to laugh, as long as it is out of her hearing, because you understand that it is absolutely true. 

At the early preview I saw, the entire cast was already uniformly strong and functioning as a tight-knit ensemble. Special kudos should go to Ms. Steeves as the emotionally stifled and developmentally-delayed Bella, reminiscent of Laura Wingfield in that other well-known memory play, Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. 

Under the excellent direction of Jenn Thompson, and aided in no small part by the perfect scenic design by John McDermott, Lost in Yonkers even allows for a little sympathy towards Grandma Kurnitz, as we gain some insights into the cause of her own bitter toughness.  There is a moment towards the end in which she shows the audience (though not her family) a momentary glimpse of happiness that is both startling and revelatory.

Lost in Yonkers is a bit messy as the center of attention moves from character to character like a hot potato being tossed around, yet the place where it ultimately lands is most satisfying and appropriate. In the end, it doesn’t much matter whether this is a reflection of Simon’s actual recollections or purely a work of imagination.  There is a ring of truth that undoubtedly contributed to the original production’s walking away with a Pulitzer Prize and multiple Tony Awards and that makes this revival a rich and valuable theatrical experience.

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Merrily We Roll Along, And Along, And Along--But Are We There Yet?

Cast of Encores! Production of 'Merrily We Roll Along.' Photo by Joan Marcus

Cast of Encores! Production of 'Merrily We Roll Along.' Photo by Joan Marcus  

Merrily We Roll Along holds a special place in the hearts of many a Stephen Sondheim fan. In most cases, my own included, this emotional connection is tied to the original Broadway cast recording, particularly since productions have been few and far between ever since its unfortunate 16-performance run back in 1981.

Now it’s back, at least for a few performances (ending on Sunday), kicking off the new season of the Encores! series at the newly (and beautifully) refurbished City Center. 

The production has a lot going for it, including solid performances by the hastily-prepared cast and the musicianship of the orchestra—under Rob Berman’s sure hand—playing Jonathan Tunick’s reworked orchestrations (reworked, since some songs have been excised and others added since 1981). 

No matter what one might think of the show itself,  Merrily We Roll Along still has its share of “hummable-mummable” songs, including Old Friends, Not A Day Goes By, and that wonderful ode to youthful optimism, Our Time. 

Rather than go into the strengths and weaknesses of the Encores! production, however,  I’d like to jump into the debate that has stalked Merrily We Roll Along since its inception.   That is, what went wrong, and have years of tinkering fixed it?

The problems with the original production, which I did not see, have frequently been attributed to the youthfulness and relative inexperience of the cast, needing to play characters who start out as middle aged and go back in time 20 years as the play progresses.  That is the conceit of the show—a backward look at a life of compromises and digressions from the idealism of youth, underscored by a betrayal of marriage and the loss of deeply-rooted friendships. 

I don’t pretend to know how to make it work, but it does seem to me that Merrily We Roll Along takes a huge risk by running its story backwards (as did the not-terribly-successful 1934 Kaufmann and Hart play on which it is based). 

That’s because you’ve got to show a moment of regret at the start, and then ask the audience to hold that thought as you build an emotionally resonating history, so that the viewer will ultimately agree that this has, indeed, been a life worthy of regret. 

You could go the way of Ebenezer Scrooge, I suppose.  However, rather than Dickens, I would suggest that the world of opera—not unheard of in a conversation about Sondheim’s oeuvre—for other models.  

Give us, for example, the beginning of Faust at the front end, and the beginning of La Bohème at the other.   

Unfortunately, instead of Faust—filled with regret near the end of his life—we  have Frankin Shepherd, a man in his 40s, a successful movie producer, whose “crime” is that he veered from a path as a successful writer of musicals in order to pursue other interests. Hardly the stuff of grand tragedy.

And at the other end, we have what we are told is a binding friendship among Frank, Charley, and Mary, and a great love between Frank and Beth. 

But unlike the brilliantly-depicted camaraderie in La Bohème, the relationship among the triumvirate in Merrily We Roll Along is never convincingly significant.  Yes, Sondheim has given us the songs Opening Doors and Our Time to suggest such a deep friendship, but these are generational rather than personal anthems, and we are asked to believe their unbreakable bond is forged in a moment on the roof.  Love at first sight may have worked for West Side Story, but it doesn’t work for Merrily We Roll Along. 

The same could be said for Frank and Beth’s great love.  A marriage that ends in divorce is unfortunate, but it is rather too common among Frank’s set to be considered a tragic turn of events.  Actually, Frank’s estrangement from his son might be worth pursuing, but it is barely mentioned.

So we have it.  The world has presumably lost a successful composer of musicals, and even if we choose to believe Charley’s contention that “no one does it better,” Frank’s choice of a direction for his life is his to make.  Yet, we see precious little regret coming from him—only from Charley, his former writing partner, and from Mary, who has spent her life mooning over Frank.  It’s a shame, I guess, but it fails to fulfill the promise of the show’s premise. 

And so we have it.  I, for one, will go back to listening to the original cast recording and envisioning a different production of Merrily We Roll Along than the one we have actually been given.


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'Assistance': What Won't We Do to Inch Up the Ladder of Success?

Virginia Kull and Michael Esper.  Photo by Joan Marcus



Imagine what it would be like if your boss were truly the megalomaniac you think he is.

That is Daniel, the never-seen but always-present world class monster who rules his universe with an iron fist in Assistance, Leslye Headland’s sharply sardonic and scarily funny take on life in the fast lane, being given a near-flawless production at Playwrights Horizons under the keen eye of director Trip Cullman.

Lord knows how Daniel—who has all of the charm of Violet Weston in August:  Osage County and the self-absorption of Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada—became so successful at whatever it is he does (we’re never told, but a guess would be that he is a major player in the entertainment industry).  He apparently cannot tie his own shoelaces without the help of an endless parade of personal assistants whom he badgers, goads, humiliates, and tosses away like so many used tissues.

Assistance takes place in Daniel’s headquarters office, where a steady stream of ambitious wannabes play musical chairs among the three desks, tied to their computers and telephones like so many air traffic controllers at the world’s busiest airport.   

These bright, young, self-assured success seekers are like those knights lined up in the fairy tales, where the prize of the princess’s hand in marriage and half the kingdom is up for grabs to the one who can solve the riddle or slay the dragon.  Never mind that the road leading up to the castle is strewn with dead bodies; each is convinced he or she has what it takes to win it all.

It’s hard to know why they stay, what with the low wages, long hours, and constant abuse, but working for Daniel seems to be a great step up the career ladder for the young and ambitious—if conflicted—staffers.   As one of them puts it:  “I hate it here, and I don’t want to leave!”

The play opens with Nick (Michael Esper) and Vince (Lucas Near-Verbrugghe) taking phone calls and trading banter like computer wonk buddies at one of those Silicon Valley enclaves.  Vince is delighted to have won his exit pass, a move “across the hall” to some sort of managerial position away from the direct clutches of Daniel.  Nick’s goal, says Vince, should be the same as his was, to find someone who can do the first assistant’s job better than you, so that you will be transferred out.

So Vince moves out, Nick moves up, and in comes Nora (Virginia Kull), whose own personal goal is to be so successful that one day she can take Daniel’s place. 

Nick and Nora form a survival/romantic bond of sorts, and they are joined by three others as the play progresses: Heather (Sue Jean Kim), whose raison d'être is making her parents proud of her; Justin (Bobby Steggert), who lives to make excuses for Daniel’s heinous behavior and hopes he will someday actually please the boss; and Jenny (Amy Rosoff), a cool-as-a-cucumber multi-tasker whom nothing seems to faze. 

There is no through plot in a conventional sense, but there is an inevitable arc to the action, as each character either finds or is pushed through an exit.  And there are few qualms about shoving any of the others under the bus in order to hang on for one more day.   

The vibe is hyperkinetic as things are set spinning out of control.  We can imagine the characters living on triple-shot espressos, energy drinks, and alertness drugs as they work unceasingly to make sure the Great One’s needs are met, no matter the sacrifice.

The dialog throughout is sharp and clever, and presented with rapid-fire flair by a very talented cast indeed.  Mr. Esper, in particular, is magnetic as the always hopeful Nick, expecting at any moment to follow his buddy Vince to that wonderful land “across the hall.”  But all of the others have their moment in the spotlight, and Ms. Rosoff takes it on home at the end with a most magnificent breakdown, for which she and the director must share the credit with the set designer David Korins and choreographer (yes, I said choreographer) Jeffry Denman. 

I have long admired Playwright Horizon’s commitment to nurturing and providing a showcase for new or relatively new playwrights. Assistance joins the winner’s circle with such recent gems as Bathsheba Doran’s Kin, Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation, and Adam Bock’s A Small Fire.    

Playwright’s Horizons is offering discount tickets on orders placed by February 21:

Use the code HELPMEBLOG
$40 (reg. $70) for all performances through Feb. 19

$50 (reg. $70) for all other performances Feb 21-Mar 11

Online  http://goo.gl/ZY7ks
Call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 Noon to 8PM daily
In Person: Ticket Central Box Office, 416 W. 42nd Street between 9^th & 10^th Avenues

30&Under Party February 16 following the performance
All non-member tickets $25.  Use code PARTY.  Proof of age required at door.
Order at http://goo.gl/DpR5m


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Seeking the Soul of 'Wit'

Cynthia Nixon stars in 'Wit'

See that woman dressed in a thin hospital gown, head shaved and covered with a baseball cap?  She is Vivian Bearing, whose surname ironically describes the dual nature of her current status. 

On the one hand, she has the regal bearing of a highly regarded scholar at the height of her career, admired by those in her academic circle and held in fear and trembling by the students in her metaphysical poetry class. This is an image she has cultivated for herself, one that she has lived with most satisfyingly for many years. 

Now, however, another meaning of her name has come into play, referencing the fact that Professor Bearing is bearing up under a terrible regimen of experimental chemotherapy, in the minuscule chance that it might beat back stage four ovarian cancer.  She has no choice; as she reminds the audience, “there is no stage five.”

This is the conceit of Wit, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Margaret Edson, now in revival at the Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.  Whatever plans we may have for ourselves, life has a way of following its own course; however many layers of self-protective armor we wrap ourselves in, life has a way of stripping things down to the basics. 

At the play’s start, Vivian (Cynthia Nixon) puts on a brave front, using sarcasm and badinage to deal—or to avoid dealing—with her situation. She realizes, she says, that this is a matter of life and death, but “I know all about life and death” as a specialist in the metaphysical poetry of John [Death Be Not Proud] Donne. 

Enduring eight months of debilitating chemotherapy turns out to be rather more physical than metaphysical, however, and Vivian is forced to relinquish all vestiges of her own pride for the sake of survival.  And the woman who has always considered herself to be fiercely independent is now dependent on others—the condescending doctors (Michael Countryman and Greg Keller) who see her as little more than a means for collecting research data, and the nurse (Carra Patterson), who singularly shows her a degree of compassion. 

Through flashbacks, we get to see bits of Vivian’s life-before-cancer:  as a young child encouraged by her father to use and cherish her intellect; as a less-than-stellar student gaining her first knowledge of Donne from her mentor (Suzanne Bertish, perfect in a role that gives her the play’s most touching moment); and as a demanding professor giving her own students a hard time.

Ms. Edson, the playwright, who has determinedly remained in her career as an elementary school teacher, drew upon previous experience working in the cancer and AIDS unit of a research hospital and her own education as a literature major to create this powerful opus.  


Wit is not without its flaws—there is a confrontational scene regarding a “do not resuscitate” order that seems unnecessarily shoehorned in for dramatic effect, and the flashbacks don’t always add to our understanding of Vivian—yet the story itself is one that can and does resonate with audiences.  Death, after all, makes no exceptions.  We just hope for a more benign final journey than the one Vivian has to face.    

 

For Ms. Nixon and director Lynne Meadow, both of whom are breast cancer survivors, this first-time Broadway mounting of Wit seems to be a labor of love for a play they believe most strongly in. But everything does depend upon the actress playing the central role.


The New York Times Magazine this week published a profile of Ms. Nixon that describes her as “eager to please.”  I felt that eagerness in her performance and found it a bit off-putting.  It seems to me that  Vivian should arrive wrapped in more self-assuredness, even arrogance, especially in the first half before the illness has rubbed away the façade. 

Whether you find Ms. Nixon to be compelling or underpowered will need to be your personal response. For myself, I prefer Emma Thompson’s portrayal in the Mike Nichols filmed version and highly recommend it as an alternative.


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Angry, Angrier, Angriest

Matthew Rhys looks back in anger

Well, if nothing else, they got the “angry” part right.

That, unfortunately, is the best that can be said for the rage-infused revival of John Osborne’s groundbreaking play, Look Back In Anger, now on view at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theater. 

Look Back In Anger, a sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued portrait of the lost generation of post-World War II 20-something Brits, has always had a mixed reputation.  Ever since its London premiere in 1956, it has been both reviled and revered, but, having seen two very different productions in the past couple of years, I believe there are depths to be found within this seemingly endless rant of a play that are waiting to be corralled by the right director and the right actors.

In this case, the director is Sam Gold, who in recent years has shown himself to be a wunderkind (Circle Mirror Transformation, The Aliens, Seminar) and who is now—for better or for worse, it remains to be seen which—a Roundabout Associate Artist.  Look Back in Anger, however, seems to have eluded his grasp.

Here, Gold has opted to rev up the audience with a pre-show recorded jazz concert (Dizzy Gillespie?), which, depending on your predilection for such things, is either highly entertaining (I enjoyed it) or migraine-inducing (as a theater-going colleague called it). 

The connection to the play is peripheral.  Osborne’s “angry young man” Jimmy Porter (Matthew Rhys, who is Welsh and at least sounds authentically British) had, at one time, performed with a jazz band.  During the course of the play, he pulls out his trumpet from time to time and bleats some dissonant riffs, seemingly for the sole purpose of annoying those around him.  If he could play like the recorded jazz musicians, he would have a brilliant future indeed (but then he might lose his hallmark frustrated edginess.)

The play itself opens with a long period of silence, as Jimmy and his friend Cliff  (the ubiquitous Adam Driver, for whom Roundabout and various efforts at British accents have defined his work through several recent productions) are reading the Sunday papers, while Jimmy’s wife Alison (the unfortunately shrill Sarah Goldberg)—dressed in a bra, slip, and open house robe—is doing the ironing. 

This opening, set in a squalid room that defines the narrow boundaries of Jimmy and Alison’s flat and of their lives, is rather Pinteresque in its snapshot of skewed domesticity and its discomfiting air of foreboding.  Alas, however, the silence is soon broken, and Jimmy spends much of the rest of the play spewing forth a steady stream of invective aimed at Alison and her upper class family, Cliff, the landlady, the government, the church, the world in general, and, upon occasion, himself.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the play as it is being presented on the stage of the Laura Pels. 

But it needn’t be that way.   The play raises some intriguing issues that beg to be explored.  If Pinter shows up in the opening scene, there are also pieces of August Strindberg, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee to be found.

Borrowing from Strindberg, imagine if Miss Julie had married her footman.  What would their lives be like?  That’s Alison and Jimmy, locked forever in some fatal love-hate attraction that is beyond easy understanding. 

Alison is Jimmy’s equal in many ways, but her tactics are her own, and she definitely is not afraid of his bluster.  For the most part, she gets in her digs by choosing not to react to his baiting, by being openly sexual with Cliff, and by cultivating friendships with people she knows that Jimmy despises. There is also in the play a scene that has been deleted for this production, a reunion between Alison and her father that is very telling about the world she has left behind.  This is an important moment, because it unexpectedly shows her father to be a kind and sympathetic character and adds another layer of complexity to the unfolding events.  Yet it has been sacrificed, either to spare the expense of hiring another actor or in service of the vexing and constant battle.  

Then there is Tennessee Williams.  A passing remark is made about Marlon Brando, and, indeed, Jimmy does have a lot in common with Stanley Kowalksi, the brutish character Brando so indelibly brought to life in A Streetcar Named Desire.  Like Stanley famously yelling for his Stella, there is a core of pain underlying Jimmy’s anger, a pain that—if brought out though directorial and acting choices—would humanize Jimmy and give the audience someone they could actually care about. 

There is also Jimmy’s puzzling relationship with Cliff, another important key to understanding Jimmy that could be explored more deeply.  The production I saw back in 2010 by The Seeing Place at A.T.A. Sargent Theater played up this aspect and made the triangle a most interesting one.  In this production, however, Cliff seems to lack personality and serves solely as the mediator between Jimmy and Alison.

Later, the delicate balance they have all maintained is threatened with the arrival on the scene of Alison’s friend Helena (a solid performance by Charlotte Parry).   Major upheaval ensues, yet in this production Jimmy seems pretty much unaffected, unable or unwilling to move out of the role he has assigned to himself.  In the end, a temporary truce comes into play (à la Albee's George and Martha at the end of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), but we cannot leave the theater imagining it will last for long. 

In the final analysis, I found this production of Look Back In Anger to be disappointing.   Jimmy, our jazz trumpeter, is purely a Johnny One-Note, and Osborne’s significant portrait of a sadly lost soul is itself lost on us. 

 

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'Lysistrata Jones': She Likes Basketball. How About That!

Patti Murin as Lysistrata Jones

Sometimes, while settling into your seat prior to the start of a performance, it’s fun to eavesdrop (and pretty much impossible to avoid, in any case) on the conversations around you.

Take today for instance.  While awaiting the matinee curtain of the bouncy, cute musical Lysistrata Jones (at the Walter Kerr Theatre), I heard this great conversation behind me:

Theatergoer A:  I don’t really know what this is about.  Do you?

Theatergoer B:  Something about basketball…and sex.

Theatergoer A:  Well, I can handle one or the other, but I’m not sure about both.

I think Theatergoer A handled it just fine, at least based on the intermission conversation.

And what’s not to like?  Lysistrata Jones is a charming romp of a show, with book by  Douglas Carter Beane and performed by a talented cast of 12 and an equally talented band, visible on a catwalk above the stage and actively involved in the proceedings.

You might call Lysistrata Jones a labor of love by Mr. Bean’s circle of friends and his life partner, composer and lyricist Lewis Flinn. The pair collaborated on Mr. Beane’s very funny The Little Dog Laughed; the show is directed by Dan Knechtges, who choreographed the musical Xanadu, with book by DCB; and the band performs under the baton of Brad Simmons, who worked on Mr. and Mrs. Fitch, written by Guess Who.    

It should come as no surprise that Lysistrata Jones (the title role is played in lively 'Legally Blonde' style by Patti Murin) is inspired by the Greek comedy, Lysistrata, by Aristophanes.


As in the original, our heroine persuades her girlfriends to withhold sex from their boyfriends in order to get them to do something they want.  In this case, it is not anything quite so dramatic as putting an end to war; instead, what the girls want is for the boys to actually try to win a basketball game—something the team at their very laid-back college has never done.  (“No more givin’ it up ‘til you give up givin’ it up” go the lyrics to one of the catchier numbers). 

The shenanigans are overseen by a formidable Liz Mikel as the goddess-like Hetaira (the hetairai were courtesans in Ancient Greece, and this Hetaira is a madam at a brothel), who makes sure everything stays on track until lessons are learned and all is well in the world.  

You could argue, and I would not disagree, that perhaps a Broadway theater is not the best home (size-wise or ticket-price-wise) for this bit of cotton candy, which made the trip uptown from its former home at the probably more appropriate Judson Memorial Church Gymnasium at Washington Square South.


Indeed, despite some very positive reviews, notably by Ben Brantley in The New York Times, Lysistrata Jones is set to close on Sunday.  However, it is almost certain to become a fixture at college and community theaters around the country, and could very well show up for a longer stay at an Off-Broadway house like the New World Stages, where it would be right at home alongside other former Broadway shows like Avenue Q, Million Dollar Quartet, and Rent. 

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