The Last Days of Look Back in Anger

I caught a performance of Look Back in Anger close to the end of its run. The play evoked a palpable feeling of resignation and not simply because of proximity to its final performance. The portrayal of the angry young man that made so strong an impression on British theater has always affected me more as the depiction of women who have become resigned to a relationship threaded with abuse. My desire to see this incarnation was based mostly on a curiosity of what director Sam Gold would do with it. In New York theater, this has been the year of Sam Gold. He seems to be everywhere, and what has impressed me about his work is an incredible grasp of what sexual tension looks and feels like. That talent was on full display here; it was a veritable pressure cooker onstage. And much of that was due to the space he created for this production. The stage measured only five and a half feet deep, so in moments of either passionate intimacy or aggressive horseplay, the actors seemed precipitously close to the edge – of the stage, of reason, and so on. Also the set was gross. Garbage, half-eaten food, clothing, and newspapers covered the floor and further muddied and crowded the Porter home.

The fiery, vitriolic center of Look Back in Anger is Jimmy Porter, a lower-class Brit who is torn between love and resentment for his well-educated, upper-class wife, Alison. In this production, Jimmy’s anger touched on themes of politics and class struggles, but they didn’t penetrate those topics. Mostly he was a cantankerous asshole, which Matthew Rhys (the Brothers and Sisters star) portrayed convincingly but without much nuance.

Jimmy and Alison live with their close friend, Cliff, an unrefined yet sweet soul of a guy who becomes increasingly affectionate with Alison the more Jimmy puts her down. Played by Adam Driver, Cliff added much needed heart to the production. The play holds big surprises which occur following the arrival of Helena, Alison’s well-bred friend who is appalled by Jimmy’s boorishness and conspires to help Alison leave him. Gold embraced these twists of plot through movement that imposed on the confined space, but while visually interesting, it didn’t resonate. Maybe I just couldn’t get past the utter malleability of women, which (even in the 1950’s world of John Osbourne) is hard to digest. The only touching moment was the one that showed Jimmy and Alison’s playful and sincere intimacy. It revealed why she would marry someone so harmful: there is genuine passion there, though it was generally eclipsed by their incompatibility.

The signature tableau of the play depicted a woman ironing men’s clothing while the men snicker at the newspaper. The meticulousness dedicated to removing every wrinkle from Jimmy’s shirts looked bizarre amidst an absurdly dirty apartment. I’d probably pick garbage off my floor before starting on ironing, but maybe I was missing part of Gold’s aesthetic in those moments. In any case, he’s now on to his next revival, a new adaptation of Uncle Vanya, coming to Soho Rep this June. Despite Look Back in Anger falling a bit short, Gold is in the auspicious position of being a discernible success even when some of his productions aren’t.

The Ups and Downs of Smash

By now, nearly anyone who cares about the portrayal of theater on television has voiced an opinion on “Smash”. I keep thinking I’ll write it off – and the show has enough cringe-inducing elements to merit that action – but I have an impulse to watch week to week. The inner workings of the Broadway world – which “Smash” attempts to portray – has its inherent intrigue, and whenthe show isn’t forcing the overly earnest, Lifetime for Women subplots, there’s some good behind-the-scenes stuff of theater. How composers and writers craft a musical, how the director builds a cast, how producers seek investors. And then there’s the lower brow but juicier drama: rivalries between actresses, trysts between actors and directors, and feuds among the creative team. I love to see rehearsals in progress, directors conceptualizing a scene, and talented performers at work. Episode 4 of “Smash” brought a taste of that. But then it went in a totally weird direction when the cast members who had been ostracizing the newbie Karen (Katherine Mcphee) and disparagingly calling her “Iowa”, suddenly took her under their wing by teaching her dance steps to Adele’s “Rumour Has It” as a way to help her embrace the concept of an ensemble. Huh??? In every episode so far, there has been a scene (or scenes) that evokes a “What on earth?” reaction. Last episode it was the part where Karen heads home and performs a country karaoke number for her friends who call her “Broadway”, which I guess is the opposite of calling someone “Iowa”.

I think we choose to watch particular television shows because we see a world portrayed onscreen that is naturally captivating. At least that’s how I justify my sustained interest in the Real Housewives series. “Smash” doesn’t have to go for the treacly subplot – like the storyline about adopting a baby from China. And it doesn’t have to go for the faux-suspense – like the pointless arc of Ellis, the sartorially collegiate assistant with a conniving streak. Give me the good stuff of theater. Here’s hoping the team behind “Smash” (theater veterans among them) can deliver.

Theater Review: Wit

A patient is generally interrupted by her doctor 18 seconds after she starts speaking. Such is the common failing of good physicians: medical care that loses sight of the patient as human. The bedside manner. The Hippocratic Oath. In Margaret Edson’s play Wit, the human touch of doctors is betrayed by the question asked in rote monotone to sick patients: “How are you feeling today?” Our narrator Vivian Bearing, poetry scholar and cancer patient, opens the play with this inquiry, and explains that for a cancer patient, such a question is at best a formality and at worst an insult. She flips this seemingly innocuous question on its head and gives it a new meaning as though she were interpreting a poem. Margaret Edson, a sixth-grade teacher, has one play to her name. And it is, as Cynthia Nixon put it, “a near perfect play.” Nixon currently stars in Wit’s first Broadway production, playing Vivian, our guide through cancer with a key to the poets. Diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer, with numerous accolades and scholarly publications under her belt but nary a friend or close colleague, Vivian is sick and entirely alone. She doesn’t resent her physicians’ cold cerebral approach; in fact, it mirrors her own. The doctors’ dogged pursuit of knowledge and discovery in medicine – portrayed by their administering inhumane levels of chemo – is juxtaposed with Vivian’s inexhaustible study of poetry, particularly the Holy Sonnets of John Donne. Her tension as a patient comes in her need to tell us – the audience, her only confidants – that she is someone to be recognized, that she still has much purpose. Between bouts of chemotherapy, she teaches us poetry, elucidating John Donne’s struggle with life, death, and afterlife.

As a result, Wit – a play that seems to pull at the heartstrings of viewers – was also one of the most intellectually engaging works I’ve even seen. Dressed in a hospital gown throughout the play, Vivian leads us theatrically through her life and her life’s work. For former English majors like myself, there is so much pleasure in hearing poetry out loud. We hear Vivian recite the words of John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”, first with the austere, intellectual remove of a scholar and later with the gut-wrenching urgency of a terminal patient. Cynthia Nixon is wholeheartedly committed to Vivian. She breathes life into this role.

One of the most poignant motifs in Wit is the frequent interplay of teacher and student: Vivian with her college students, oncology physicians with their residents, a doctor and his patient. Edson shows how often great scholars can fail as teachers, perhaps because their love of the material overshadows their ability to empathize and listen. In this beautiful play, Edson demonstrates that what we continually need, through sickness and health, is to be heard.

Theater Review: Other Desert Cities

In the opening scene of Other Desert Cities, we meet Polly and Lyman Wyeth, a couple so unapologetically – and comically – Republican, my first point of reference went immediately to Jack Donaghy from 30 Rock. Exemplifying wealthy elitism, disdain for taxes, and unrelenting hawkishness, they create a stark contrast against their adult children who range from lefty to indifferent. We meet the family on the occasion of their daughter Brooke’s visit from the east coast where she’s lived for several years. The narrative occurs in the Wyeth’s Palm Springs home, which manages to be upscale without having any particular sense of style. Everything in their living room is beige, and one might guess that their entire social circle is similarly colored. Brooke, a writer, has a new book coming out and a big announcement to make: the new work is a memoir that promises to unearth several skeletons from the family’s history. The senior Wyeths are understandably nervous; the book’s disclosure of a harrowing family situation implicates both of them. As a small courtesy, Brooke has manuscripts for everyone and offers her relatives the chance to address any truly objectionable material before the New Yorker publishes an excerpt.

In the scenes that follow, Polly, Lyman, Trip (Brooke’s brother), and Aunt Silda all have their turns hurling vitriol at one another over the tensions and buried secrets that the book digs up. The performances are phenomenal, particularly the elder Wyeths, played by Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach. The conservative caricatures they present in the play’s opening evolve seamlessly into complex, nuanced individuals whose worldviews and principles come deeply at odds with parental love and protection.

Ultimately, a big reveal is made – a surprise that turns the family secret upside down. But I didn’t find it as satisfying or powerful as I imagine it intended to be. Throughout the previous scenes of insults and attacks, there is the sense that something big is imminent. And it is. But I found it so hard to believe that it made the play nosedive into implausibility. I admire Jon Robin Baitz’s bold writing and his ability to keep the tension level simmering throughout the pressure cooker that exists in the seemingly serene Wyeth home. And I liked his portrayal of how staunch political belief can seem unflinching until it compromises your own child. The play is an impressive work, but the climax felt false, like the Palm Springs home that has the appearance of comfort.

Theater Review: Once

When I first saw the movie Once, I was struck by how lovely itwas given how little happens. Two musicians with little means but abundant talent meet and create a demo album. He (Guy) is an Irish guitarist and songwriter who’s down on luck, love, and any future prospects. She (Girl) is a Czech pianist who is a stark realist with a passion for music. When she hears one of Guy’s songs on the streets of Dublin one night, she feels with absolute conviction that his music needs to be heard by a wider audience. A quiet romance builds as they begin to create music together, and for a couple that barely touches throughout the whole movie, there’s an unbelievable amount of sexual energy. What I love most is that the subtlety of their love story is weighed against the fierce emotion of the songs. When Glen Hansard’s voice hits the upper register on the song, “Say it to Me Now,” it is nothing short of an emotional experience. The stage adaptation at New York Theatre Workshop was beautiful as well, and it allowed the musical to breathe as its own theatrical entity. This production treats music very differently in that way; all of the actors play instruments and sit on stage the entire show, picking up their violins or guitars during various songs to create a swell of music. The success of the adaptation owes much to director John Tiffany and choreographer Steven Hoggett. Their talent is in understanding how an audience interacts with a performance. Creating a functioning bar onstage where cast mates sing and play instruments as though part of a spontaneous hootenanny, and where, cleverly, audience members can buy a pint of Guinness before the show and during intermission brings one into the world of a Dublin pub. The way the characters’ movement contributes to the narrative is equally evocative. During one scene in which Girl writes lyrics to Guy’s music, she places headphones over her ears and responds to the melody as though she feels the music in her entire body.

The only place where the production falters is the book. Enda Walsh goes for the easy laugh a few too many times and makes some scenes feel clumsily strewn together like unrehearsed sketch comedy. But he does expand the roles of each character far more than the movie allows, which adds dimension and depth to the show.

It’s rare to see a love story like this one where individuals who have so much chemistry are so reluctant to say expressly how they feel. Rather it’s conveyed through their musical collaboration and the inspiration they draw from each other. I hope to see Once flourish on Broadway. A quiet story may seem dwarfed by a grander stage, but the music will fill the space perfectly.

Theater Review: Follies

Youth is wasted on the young, as the saying goes. Or maybe it just feels that way after going to a reunion: that painful occasion that propels even those with successful careers and youthful faces to feel that their best years are behind them. Follies is Steven Sondheim’s grand tribute to what once was and what might have been. The revival was beautiful to watch, and its threads of nostalgia were woven through each scene and song. In discussing a Sondheim musical, I feel I should admit that I’m not swept away by him as many are. Admittedly, I named this blog after a Sondheim lyric, which presupposes a certain fandom, but I think the topic of his lyrics is the whole point: his brilliance is in the words. With the exception of one song in Follies, the musicis more entertaining than moving, and for a show that grapples with the pain of lost love, it should have more of the latter.

Similarly, the characters are not very nuanced which demands that the actors do much with little material. Jan Maxwell (Phyllis) does that best. She strikes a balance between being hurt by a distant husband and being too proud to admit it. Her scene-stealing dancing, singing, and general gorgeousness made her one of the best parts of the show. Bernadette Peters less so. She portrays Sally as a fragile lost lamb whose excessive voice quiver made her seem about to crumble at any moment. When she reconnects with Phyllis’ husband Ben, the man she had wanted to marry, she deludes herself into thinking they’ll have a second chance at love, a moment that felt heavy-handed where it ought to feel heartbreaking. That said, her rendition of “Losing My Mind” was so beautiful, it almost benefitted from Peters’ diminished voice. The frailty of her high notes was more poignant than had she belted them out.

The sadness of Sally and Phyllis, and their husbands Buddy and Ben, is that they still seem so confused about who they are even after all these years, and each feels in some way that the potential for great love has been lost. The youthful versions of the main characters pale in comparison and not only due to the ghostly lighting cast on them throughout the performance. They come across like vapid young things who don’t have much ambition beyond getting marred. What disappointed me about Follies was that the present day characters are only slightly more fleshed out. Ultimately, these love stories are simple, and if they resonate with viewers, it’s because of the abstract empathy felt toward anyone whose hopes for a relationship don’t quite pan out. What moved me instead was the way that reunions conjure earlier versions of oneself. For Phyllis and Sally, the hardest image to conceptualize is not who they were but who they are.

Theater Review: We Live Here

When actors decide to try their hands at writing, directing, or other nonperformance-based roles, they seem to open themselves up to criticism. What is it about Ethan Hawke writing a novel or Drew Barrymore directing a film that makes the public predict it’ll be terrible until proven otherwise? Maybe it’s the very misguided notion that actors are dumb or the reluctance to admit that some people are just that talented. Which brings me to Zoe Kazan’s new play, We Live Here. Kazan actually studied playwriting, but she segued early on into acting and, by her mid-20’s, had already done Chekhov on Broadway. With her first Off-Broadway production, she proves she can write, and while the play left me wanting a little more, I think she’s about to become one of those rare artists to enjoy a double career. A family drama set in the comfortable living room of an upscale New England home – a Pottery Barn catalog brought to life – We Live Here introduces us to a suburban family on the eve of daughter Allie’s wedding. Her much younger sister, Dinah, has a new boyfriend who comes for the wedding weekend without so much as a heads up let alone a formal invitation. When he arrives, it’s clear he has a history with this family, and their reactions range from surprise to nervous breakdown. Whatever went down with Daniel and the family happened years ago at a time when Dinah was too young to know better. Kazan shows her skill in subtly powerful ways here, dropping clues like breadcrumbs, and Sam Gold’s nuanced directing makes us feel the awkwardness of Daniel’s reunion with the family. By intermission, I was riveted.

But then the second act dismantles upon itself. As the family’s complications are increasingly revealed, it appears that Daniel isn’t integral to their problems; those hardships probably would have happened with or without him. An unexpected flashback is a thoughtful surprise, but it doesn’t illuminate anything beyond a very troubled family – which we already knew. In spite of it, the cast was fantastic. I loved watching Jessica Collins and Oscar Isaac (as Allie and Daniel) play off each other again. I remember seeing them as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth when both were students at Juilliard, and it’s great to see their onstage chemistry again. The play didn’t fully come together for me, but it’s clear Zoe Kazan is on to something. I’m excited to see what she does next.

Theater Review: The Select

“This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with a wine like that.“ Just one of the many perfectly blended lines from Earnest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises that comes to life in its stage adaptation, The Select. The Elevator Repair Service’s third homage to great American literature, The Select takes us on a nearly four-hour tour through Paris and Pamploma with an entertaining troupe of expats who measure out their lives in wine bottles. Our narrator is Jake Barnes (Mike Iveson), a smart-alecky but gregarious chap who doesn’t let much ruffle him, not even an injury in the first World War that rendered him impotent. The only force that gets beneath his skin is Lady Brett Ashley (a radiant Lucy Taylor). The fact that their relationship always teeters between friends and lovers lends a romantic “what if” element to every scene that features the two of them. The natural chemistry between them was among my favorite parts of the play – from the way they seem to have a secret understanding to their adorable dance to a French pop song. (I confess, I always love a dance interlude and this show has two of them.)

Director John Collins makes phenomenal use of his stellar cast. The actors who play several characters apiece are in no way secondary to this production. They create the idiosyncratic world of Café Select and the bullfighting ring, of old friends and temporary lovers. And Collins gives each actor the opportunity to explore his or her range. While the show goes on a bit too long, it’s nonetheless filled with one inventive scene after another, incorporating an ingenious use of sound design to celebrate the familiar pours and clinks heard in one’s favorite bar. The way Collins utilizes the space is equally clever; an ordinary folding table is believable as a big fish, an angry bull, and a hotel bed.

ERS’ enthusiasm for great literature is contagious and inspired me (as I’m sure many others) to dust off a few Hemingway novels and approach the writer’s trademark language with new perspective. Interesting how some of the lines that can seem so cold on the page become something rich and fluid with the right production.

Theater Review: Master Class

I have two pet peeves when it comes to theater: undeserved moments of fourth wall breaking and shows that rest on the strength of one performer. The fact that Master Class had both wouldn’t have been so noticeable if the play had had more heft and substance. Terrence McNally’s 1995 play about the legendary opera singer Maria Callas leading a master class at Juilliard focuses mainly on a vibrant rendering of Callas made even more vibrant by the performance of an extraordinary actress in that role. Previous Marias have included Patti Lupone and Zoe Caldwell – undoubtedly big shoes to fill. This production features Tyne Daly in the lead role, and she’s extraordinary. Regal, dynamic, and intimidating. But unfortunately, the play is less concerned with creating a narrative than with showing “what Maria Callas was like.” It reminded me of so many biopics (particularly of musicians) where the film feels formulaic and obvious, and the redeeming quality lies entirely on a skilled actor in the leading role. As for the fourth wall breaking, it happens in the first minute of the play. Daly enters the stage and immediately the audience begins clapping. Then she scowls at the crowd and states, “No applause.” It’s a clever technique: the line is said by Callas to the imagined attendants of the master class, but it of course works on the level of Daly speaking to the audience. This would be a great opener if the attention then shifted to the scene onstage, but it goes on a bit too long and starts to feel like Maria Callas doing stand-up.

One recurring joke is Callas’ insistence that the master class “is not about me.” Namely, it’s about the opera students. But of course it is entirelyabout her and her ability to dominate any room, discussion, and relationship. Her frequent deflection of praise followed immediately by a lengthy recounting of her greatest achievements becomes a repetitive device that gets tiring in spite of Daly’s excellent stage presence and comic timing.

Her main objective in working with the students is to open their eyes to the meaning of the words. This was the most captivating part of the play: Callas’ insistence that her students find the emotion behind the music. What she does best is break her students down and build them up again, an approach that works most poignantly with her first student, the awkward yet resilient Sophie (Alexandra Silber). The two following students do less for the play. A corpulent singer named Anthony (Garrett Sorenson) is cast mainly to show off his magnificent voice, but Sorenson, while an accomplished opera singer, has little acting experience and is a bit cringe-worthy in his spoken lines. The third student, Sierra Boggess of Little Mermaid fame, plays the eager prima donna so forcefully that it reduces her character to stereotype.

Twice during the play, Callas takes us into her memory and revisits her proudest moments onstage as well as her tumultuous relationship with Aristotle Onassis offstage. But what’s missing in these scenes and throughout the play is any connective thread that illustrates how music or her career has changed her or what it means to teach the next generation of opera singers. Despite some heated dialogue between Callas and her students, there’s little tension at play. The experience of the master class doesn't change Callas' perspective in any way nor will it likely be memorable to her after the fact. Rather, it's a day in her life amid those hazy years after she stopped singing.

Theater Review: Jerusalem

Johnny “Rooster” Byron was born with a bullet in his teeth. He knows the giant who built Stonehenge, has jumped over thirteen buses, and pumps magic blood. In Jerusalem, what we know about Johnny is the stuff of folklore, the tall tale of a mythic creature who manages to stumble around drunk while simultaneously holding court with a collection of wayward young miscreants. Remarkably, there is no story in Jerusalem. It’s a three-hour long experience in this weird world. A bit like a dream that has no structure but captivates you nonetheless. What we see in this universe is the haven that Johnny creates for these kids, which – in spite of the drugs, booze, and squalor – is purportedly safer than what they would experience at home.

And wow – Mark Rylance. Among the performances I’ve been lucky enough to see in my life – Ian McKellan as King Lear and Cate Blanchett as Blanche Dubois among them – Mark Rylance as Johnny Byron ranks high. The opening scene in which Johnny, somewhere between hung over and still wasted, shimmies around his littered yard to a jazz record he inexplicably owns was a dialogue-free expression of his bizarre joie de vivre.

Much of the play is long, at times even tedious, and the narrative seems directionless. At each of the show’s two intermissions, I found myself wondering what conflicts were in play, what elements of the story were perched on any sort of precipice. Prior to the third act, the play seems to be a collection of scenes, some of them touching and some wickedly funny but all seemingly disconnected from any arc with meaning. And yeah I asked myself a few times, “what the hell am I missing?” or “would I appreciate this more if I had a quaalude?””

The redemption, for me, came in the play’s final moments. In part because Mark Rylance took the performance to a new level of brilliance, and in part because Jez Butterworth finally connected those loose threads. After nearly three hours of what Johnny calls an “alcoholic bucolic frolic,” we realize that there is a powerful surge coursing through this man. Approaching eviction from his illegally parked trailer and the only real home he’s ever known, Johnny conjures the spirits of giants to come to his aid. At once, he is propelled by a godly spirit. He’s not crazy after all. Or maybe he is. Butterworth doesn’t leave us satisfied, but he suggests just enough to make us believe that there is more to this man than far-fetched stories and belligerent drunkenness. There is magic in him. And with that awakening, what seemed arbitrary becomes profound.

Theater Review: The Motherfucker with the Hat

Motherfucker with the Hat is not for the faint-hearted, but those who have the palate or at least the stomach for an evening of foul-mouthed drama will experience one of the most honest plays about addiction out there. The play focuses on the relationship of Jackie (Bobby Cannavale) and Veronica (Elizabeth Rodriguez) who struggle with alcohol and cocaine addictions respectively. He’s trying to quit. She, not so much. What’s at stake is more than their sobriety, but in fact their fidelity and trust. What makes the central relationship of this play even more explosive is that Jackie and Veronica appear to be high-octane people regardless of their chemical intake. Veronica is a feral pit bull trapped in a cute, petite body. And Jackie has an endearing sweetness that is easily subverted by a short fuse. In fact, the first thing one might notice about this production is that everyone yells. A lot. Even when they’re happy. In the opening scene (one of the best I’ve ever seen in its tightness of acting, dialogue, and staging), Jackie comes home to Veronica with gifts in celebration of his first job since his release from prison. Their excitement about the job and more so about each other is expressed in sexual and gleeful vociferousness. So you can imagine that the volume only increases when, in the midst of excitement, Jackie eyes a suspicious looking hat on the table and jumps to the accusation that Veronica is cheating on him. The play continues in similar blood-pumping ferociousness as insults are hurled, secrets are uncovered, and bottles of alcohol are either smashed or guzzled.

With the understanding that addiction is a disease comes a certain empathy for individuals who aren’t in control of their destructive actions. It makes us care about Jackie and Veronica and believe that there’s love and good intentions at their core. But if the cheating or other misdoing happens while sober, then the fact of their addiction may be immaterial to their behavior. Simply put, would these characters have the capacity to be this hurtful if not for the drugs that control them? The power of this play depends, for me, on that question. For Jackie and Veronica’s relationship to mean something, I have to believe that their addiction is inextricably linked to their transgressions. To playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis’ credit, he doesn’t force the argument one way or the other. What he does instead is suggest that coping with addiction can’t help but seep into every other facet of living.

As for Chris Rock’s performance, yelling onstage has never found a more well-suited actor. Seriously, his conversational volume is decibels louder than necessary. Is that based on Anna D. Shapiro’s direction or is it just Chris Rock being Chris Rock? Either way, he holds his weight pretty well against the extraordinarily talented Bobby Cannavale.

The tone, language, and coarseness of Motherfucker occasionally feel odd in a Broadway theater, but I’m so glad that a larger audience gets to experience Stephen Adly Guirgis’ writing. The play is a bumpy ride, which – given the subject matter – makes it feel more genuine.

Unnatural Acts

Originally posted on TDF Stages. Read the full article HERE.  

Harvard is one of America’s most prestigious institutions, so a story set there, especially a dark one, especially a scandal, can uniquely capture our attention. On Wednesday, Classic Stage Company rounds out its season with Unnatural Acts, a world premiere that portrays a group of gay Harvard students who were interrogated in 1920 because of their sexuality.

Based on true events, the play begins with the suicide of a Harvard sophomore, Cyril Wilcox. When word leaks that Cyril has been involved in an underground gay community on campus, Harvard’s administrators decide to rid the university of its problem with “homosexualism” and expose the other members of this social sphere. They establish a Secret Court, whose interrogations unleash a floodgate of new nightmares for unsuspecting students.

Director Tony Speciale conceived of the production in 2006 while studying in Columbia University’s MFA theatre program. After reading an article about the Harvard interrogations, he tracked down the 500-page transcript that the Secret Court had kept hidden for decades. These documents, which identify students believed to be of questionable sexuality and detail their supposed “acts of depravity,” only surfaced in 2002, and their disclosure prompted Harvard’s then-president Lawrence Summers to issue a public apology for the acts of his predecessors.

Continue reading...

Theater Post Bin Laden

Within a day of the announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been captured and killed came the first wave of articles predicting “what this means for America”. Almost a decade after 9/11, Bin Laden had become more an emblem of terrorism than an active practitioner of it, so the effect of his death may be more representational than actual. (The actual effect, if any, remains to be seen.) From the perspective of theater however, the question it raises is “what does this mean for war-related drama?” There have been numerous plays sparked by the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, running currently on Broadway. Many of the Iraq-based plays focus on the atrocities of war and point a well-aimed finger at the American government for entering in the first place. But what is the effect or resonance of these works when our exit from Iraq is now visible and the instigator of our fight against terrorism is dead? It doesn’t render the plays pointless; after all, the wars continue. But it does soften the portrayal. And it makes the artistic response less urgent.

A play like Stuff Happens (which had its world premiere in 2004 during the thick of the Iraq war) was so timely, it approximated a dramatic reenactment of news headlines. And the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch poetically captured the pain, loss, and memories of soldiers in Iraq (though its first production at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2007 arguably struck a more powerful chord than its third run in 2011). At this point, our escalation to war feels almost historical. And we view it with a certain distance, a critical acuity that comes with retrospection.

The strength of war plays (or films for that matter) depends largely on the time of their release. Our political and emotional responses to world events shapes the mindsets we bring into the theater. The Broadway production of Time Stands Still in 2010 was incredibly powerful not only due to its writing and actors but also due to its ability to look back on Iraq so far just as we in the audience were doing the same.

Regardless of one’s reaction to Bin Laden’s death, there’s a general acknowledgement that the chapter on Iraq is coming to a close. War plays that are situated in a precise political moment run the risk of becoming dated after the fact. (Stuff Happens would be almost cartoonish today.) But when a play captures that moment in the right time, it’s something extraordinary.

Why Work in Theater

On the blog NYC World Theatre Day, contributing writer Leonard Jacobs wrote this beautiful piece about why he pursued a life in theater.  Read an excerpt of his words below ...or view the original post HERE. I keep returning to the idea that my answer to this question is not unlike Shakespeare’s seven ages of man. I was a product of New York City public schools at a time when no one dared call arts education a frill—its importance, then as now, incontrovertible and obvious. Thanks to a particular teacher—and the original and adapted plays and musicals he produced—I came to know intimately the theatre’s intoxicating properties: laughter, gasps and applause; the air of achievement and collaboration; the sense of creating and belonging to something greater than ourselves.

I also believe there’s a self-actualization process that comes from working in theatre. Many, if not most, young practitioners are blissfully unaware of it. They're newly formed and buoyed by passion—but rare is the incipient artist able to identify with true, penetrating introspection, the roots of that passion. Its gut. You must do the work.

And so I reflect on my own early-passion years as a playwright/director/dramaturge type, forever traipsing around New York City at once carefree but adamant, with fondness and charity. For there is so much beauty in “I have to write this play,” in “I need to direct this play,” in “I must ensure that this work is seen.”

We work in theatre even when the self-actualization turns painful. Then I realized that if I truly believed in theatre’s power, if I honestly saw glory in fostering something greater than myself, if I really cherished the theatre’s addictive properties, then a new career path wasn’t failure, but evolution. Cynics scoff because they’re ignorant: phrases like “those who can’t do, teach” (or “those who can’t do, critique”) are for fools. Without growth, we die.

During my 20s, I was fortunate enough to enjoy, as one of my 37 jobs, freelance gigs as a critic and arts journalist; so, with my 30s, my shift in self-identification came organically. Entering my 40s, the self-actualization goes on. I see myself equally as an advocate and a person passionate about policy. I see theatre advocacy as a way to knit my personal and professional evolution toward higher goals.

Why work in theatre? If the 9-year-old on that grammar school stage could answer that question, he’d offer a peroration for the ages. What I will share, however, is a memory that I can articulate in two words:

Lights up.

Leonard Jacobs is a writer, editor, blogger and critic with roots in arts, entertainment and culture. He is founder and editor of The Clyde Fitch Report, a nationally recognized blog covering arts and politics; he is a former national editor at Back Stage and, before that, founding editor of the website Theatermania.com. He currently contributes to a mix of digital and print publications, including the Huffington Post.

Theater Review: Vieux Carre

What I admire most about the Wooster Group is that they never simply put on a play.  They take in the full scope of the writer and the creative range of his or her work.  In performance, they embody the viewpoint of contemporary theater artisans, finding new relevance in older texts while using multi-media to interpret the work through myriad dimensions. Their revival of Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carre is no exception, and yet the performance fell short.  This late, lesser known work of Williams’ debuted on Broadway in 1977 and ran for just five performances.   It was one of the writer’s final plays and one of his most autobiographical, detailing his experience at a New Orleans boarding house during his younger years amid a motley crew of memorable misfits and eccentrics.

The play is fertile ground for a company like the Wooster Group; creating bizarre worlds is what they do well.  Veteran company members Kate Valk and Scott Shepherd play two oddballs apiece and they do so brilliantly, but their talents in physical and character transformation seem to overcompensate for a paper-thin storyline.

The play is perhaps the most emotionally naked of Williams’ oeuvre in its honest depiction of a young man exploring his sexual desires for the first time while breaking new ground as an ambitious writer.  The individuals we encounter at the boarding house are impressionable on the young writer, and the most unnerving and explicit of his experiences there become the inspiration for his first writing compositions.

But the production needs more substance.  The strange universe of the boarding house dominates the play far more than the character we care most about. Actor Ari Fliakos plays the “writer” and believably conveys his awkwardness as an inexperienced gay man reacting to entirely new types of people, particularly men to whom he’s attracted.  But we don’t have a tangible sense of who he is.  He types furiously on his keyboard, but as the words appear on a screen overhead, they appear to be just words.  Verbatim quotes from those in the house and not any sort of expression of his soul.

It’s evident that Director Elizabeth LeCompte is fascinated by the life and work of Williams and the ways in which they coalesce within this play.  As a great fan of Williams’ myself, I found a certain pleasure in watching a portrait of the artist as a young man.  Yet, sadly, this work – while notably autobiographical – shares so little of the writer’s greatest talents.

Kushner and Religion

One of my favorite moments in Angels in America is the scene where Ethel Rosenberg and Louis say Kaddish for Roy Cohn.  In the midst of a play where anger or even disdain toward God metastasizes throughout the characters comes an act that is reverent, spiritual, and deeply tied to religion: the Jewish prayer for the dead.  And even more so, it is said in honor of a loathsome individual, both in the play and in American history.  As Belize notes after asking Louis to bless someone so detestable, “It doesn’t count if it’s easy.” Playwright Tony Kushner is quoted in the book Tony Kushner in Conversation as saying, “I feel in a certain sense that the theater is the closest that I come to a religion.“  That may be so, but in his work there is a recurrent grappling with God, an ongoing presence of religion between characters of all faiths from Islam to Mormonism, frequent allusions to the Bible, and the presence of supernatural forces which suggests a certain spirituality, religious or not.  What’s interesting about this, is that such material is created by a writer whose plays are more widely known for political content, historical context, and dialogue that leans toward rationalism.

I’m excited for the New York premieres of two Kushner plays coming this season:  The Illusionand The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures.  (The Illusion was first presented as a reading at NY Theater Workshop in ’88.)  While the two works, particularly the latter, will touch on social and political themes, I’ll look for a certain wink to the divine that I imagine will exist in both productions.

Theater Review: The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore

One thing about Tennessee Williams that’s largely indisputable:  he chooses titles like no other playwright.  Consider the titles A Streetcar Named Desire or Cat on a Hot, Tin Roof: they’re poems in themselves, dramatic situations filled with longing, sometimes painful and always emotional.  So too with his later play, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, currently playing at the Laura Pels Theatre.  Even before the play begins, there is the sense of something ending, of time lost.  And in fact it is.  The work is Williams’ two-act contemplation about death, written the year his lover, Frank Merlo, passed away. Williams is known to be a creator of great female characters, and the individual grappling with mortality in this work is unsurprisingly a woman: the wealthy and reclusive Flora Goforth, spending her last days in a lavish villa in Italy.  Yet Williams also gives bodily presence to death itself, and – surprisingly or not – that persona comes in the form of a beautiful man, played by Darren Pettie (known most recently as the closeted Lucky Strike heir on Mad Men.)

The play follows two days in the life of Flora who is loath to admit how much disease has brought her to the end of her life. Played vivaciously by Olympia Dukakis, Flora's iron-willed resolve betrays her failing health and her sexual appetite masks the acknowledgment that her life is now behind her. If she sounds like Blanche Duboise aged forty years, she is. Stubbornly delusional as she preys on younger men and throws a well-shaken martini in the face of adversity, Dukasis' Flora is as irresistible to watch as she is presumably exhausting to know. But she’s essentially the only compelling aspect of this production.  Her extraordinary performance within an ordinary play reminded me of Geoffrey Rush’s turn in Exit the King, on Broadway in 2009 – another example of a boundlessly talented actor making the most of a finite script.  And coincidentally, another play in which the primary source of dramatic tension is an elderly person’s release of life.

Though Milk Train reveals an undeveloped story and frustratingly vague supporting characters, there is something poignant about Flora that sustains the show. So enraptured by the pleasures of life and the yearning desire to taste youth, excitement, and love one more time, she achieves something poetic and bittersweet that is found in the best of Williams’ plays.  Dressed in a loud flowery tunic, bright leggings, and wedge sandals, she momentarily views herself as a young woman again as she sees the handsome Pettie coming to visit her.  She looks up mischievously, cocks her head, and says, “Ok old girl, let’s give it another whirl.”

Chasing Spider-man

This week, many of the leading theater critics attended and reviewed an unfinished performance of Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark on what was previously scheduled as the musical’s opening night.  Given that the show has postponed its opening multiple times over, the critics’ rationale for early reviews was that Spider-man’s producers circumvented the system, so it’s only fair that critics follow suit.  The whole situation raises an interesting topic.  Is it significant that critics weigh in on a show before too much time passes?  Or, put more simply, how much does Broadway need reviews? Broadway theater without reviews. In the world of live performance, it has an air of government without regulation.  When it opens on March 15th, Spider-man will have had nearly four months of previews.  And I’d argue that even the term “preview” is generous.  They’re ostensibly dress rehearsals given that the creative team is still determining such details as…how it ends.

Critics write reviews to give their readers and the arts world a smart perspective on new work.  In this case, they also do so to assert their value.  I imagine it was satisfying for the community of critics to publish largely negative reviews about Spider-man. “So you want to abandon all Broadway protocol?  Well, here’s what I thought of your show!”  The New York Times’ Ben Brantley panned nearly the entire production, while New York Magazine’s Scott Brown admitted to being “riveted” not by the plot or music but the sheer entertainment value, in part due to the fact that the audience is comprised of “sick fucks”, waiting for the next actor to fall out of his harness.

It’s undisputed that a glowing review can do wonders for a new show or a budding playwright.  In fact, the only shows that succeed in spite of bad reviews are large-scale, tourist-friendly musicals, like for example, Spider-man.

I think criticism has greatest value when it does more than laud or loathe a new show: when it offers a new insight about the art form and considers what the artists were trying to achieve.  After all, every artist strives to create something amazing.  Of course they do.  There’s too much money, time, and passion involved to do otherwise.

Regardless of what Spider-man’s reviews portend for the success of the show, isn’t it cause for celebration when the hottest topic in town is arts-related?  Even when it pertains to a musical where the greatest anticipation is for the next downfall.

Theater Review: Angels in America, Millennium Approaches

Tony Kushner makes people want to pursue theater.  In my grad school program in theater, it was not uncommon or surprising to hear someone say that after reading Angels in America they knew they wanted to go into theater, whether as a playwright, director, or otherwise.  I admit that I fell into the same camp and once wrote Mr. Kushner a letter expressing that my desire to pursue theater was largely in response to his plays.  So entering the Signature Theatre last night to see the revival of Kushner’s Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, I was filled with excitement but also uncertainty about whether a revival could fill the shoes of such a magnificent, large scale play. The Signature production exceeded all expectations. (At least Millennium Approaches did; I see Perestroika in a few weeks.)  In the intimate space, the work took on epic dimensions as director Michael Greif deftly created a multi-faceted world of New York City apartments, hospital rooms, courthouses, and public parks. The Signature Theatre is devoting the 2010-2011 season to Kushner’s work and Angels in America has already received three extensions.  Whether it will transfer to Broadway is still unknown but this production has proven that the large-scale work can be just as vibrant in a smaller theater.

The cast – from seasoned stage veteran Billy Porter to TV and movie star Zachary Quinto – brought a rich honesty to their roles and never shied away from exploring the dark and flawed attributes of their characters.  This isn’t a play about pleasant people.  But at its core are weathered souls desperate for connection, marked most poignantly by two central couples: one openly gay and the other ostensibly straight.  As Frank Rich remarked in his 1993 review of the original production, “Angels in America becomes a wounding fugue of misunderstanding and recrimination committed in the name of love.”

The lighting design and set were phenomenal aids to this portrayal and created the wide breadth of starkly real environments and fantastical imaginings that the play demands.  We feel the chill of Prior’s hospital room, the serenity of the courthouse steps, and the tension of Joe and Harper’s Brooklyn apartment.

Seventeen years after the play’s stage debut, its exploration of AIDS, faith, gay culture, and politics during the Reagan years now feel removed enough to be a true revival. Where AIDS is now a largely livable condition provided that one can afford adequate health care, in the universe of Angels, it was altogether new and so severely stigmatized that President Reagan famously never uttered the name of the disease until 1987, six years after the first cases of AIDS were reported.

The revival successfully transports us to that time: to the pervasive fear incurred by a mysterious epidemic and to the dark underbelly of America during a presidency marked by nationalism and prosperity.

Kushner has never feared tackling political movements.  If anything, he embraces the most complex and unlikely of relationships that underscore the scope and polarization of America’s most volatile eras.  And he does so with poetry and pathos that lift each story out of its historical milieu and achieve an unlikely timelessness.  It’s unsurprising that he’s the playwright who launched a thousand artists.

Movie Review: Blue Valentine

A wise person once told me that falling in love isn’t the endpoint; it’s where the relationship begins.  Romantic love doesn’t last if the couple doesn’t ultimately work well together.  And yet, couples at the early stages of relationships are often so smitten with chemistry and insatiable physical activity that the question of whether they’re built to last seems like a buzz kill to rosy-cheeked romance. In Derek Cianfrance’s film about sweet love left out to curdle, a couple portrays the ways in which good people fall in and out of love.  The fact that the couple in question is delineated by Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling who are touchingly real and nuanced only adds to our wish that their young love last forever, no matter the circumstances.

The film’s scenes oscillate between present (the near dismantling of their marriage) and past (the heartfelt development of their relationship six years earlier). That Cianfrance deliberately avoids any scenes from the years in between may be disorienting or even grating on some audience members.  But the approach offers the viewer a more active vantage point than escapist movie-watching.  He also cleverly drops subtle details that he only explains later, like the song played in the hotel room or the good-looking jock in the liquor store.  They’re crucially important to the couple, and Cianfrance engages our curiosity as he reveals their significance.

At least one of the pair is featured in every frame of the film, and usually both.  They are the only ones we care about, along with their adorable daughter, and because of that, whether their relationship prevails or fails is integral to our emotional experience.  But the problem is, it’s clear - despite the warm, passionate, and love-abundant scenes of their early stages  - that their relationship is built with twigs instead of bricks.  Cindy (Michelle Wiliams) has a history with asshole men from her father to her previous boyfriend.  When sweet, endearing Dean (Ryan Gosling) enters her life, he’s a breath of fresh chivalry.  And he’s so taken by Cindy that he accepts the challenges of a relationship that escalates too quickly into marriage and parenthood.

I have to confess that the scene where Cindy and Dean stand outside a dimly lit store entrance at night and he croons along with his mandolin as she tap dances was so affective on my pliable heartstrings that I fell in love with them together and knew that their deterioration would be heartbreaking.  But it didn’t undermine the awareness of how utterly mismatched they were:  his ambition-free life and childishness to her determination and maturity.

Much of the pleasure of this film is in watching Michelle Williams who is heartbreaking in nearly every scene.  She melts seamlessly into her character, whether fragile and wide-eyed as a young woman or weathered and compromised as a mother.  Ryan Gosling’s Dean is emotionally charged as well, though he presents a less believable juxtaposition between an earnest young man and a frequently drunk father prone to hostile outbursts.

The beginnings of relationships are naturally sweet, and the ends are unsurprisingly painful or bittersweet.  The reason romantic comedies end when the couple finally falls in love is so that we don’t have to question whether or not they’ll last.