Monday, April 8, 2013
Kinky Boots Broadway Review based on performance 03/31/13
Can you believe, as do the workers in the Northampton, England shoe factory Price & Son, that a shoe is (as the opening number exuberantly proclaims) "The Most Beautiful Thing in the World"? Then there is no doubt that you will enjoy seeing all of the other beautiful things on the stage of the Al Hirschfield Theatre.
Any resemblance of the new musical Kinky Boots to the 2005 film comedy of the same name is purely intentional, but it is also almost irrelevant. There is little doubt that the intention of the collaborators, Cyndi Lauper, who wrote the music and lyrics and Harvey Fierstein, who wrote the book, was to improve on their source material.And they have done it exceedingly well.
Based on a true story, the British film comedy evidently did not please the majority of critics nor did it do too well as the box-office. It did, however, nurture a cult following not unlike the film Once that was turned into the award-winning hit musical currently on Broadway. Kinky Boots has similarly been resuscitated and revitalized into a terrifically entertaining musical with plenty of heart as well as with a plethora of heels by its collaborators. A significant adjunct to their success is Jerry Mitchell, whose perceptive direction and inventive choreography are a key component to this musical's success.
In Kinky Boots we recognize issues about the struggle many have to being open-mined and tolerant to the many facets of sexual preference and diversity explored in La Cage Aux Folles, and the predominantly juke-box musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. The Kinky Boots team is to be commended for this more modestly but no less affably conceived creation .
Set designer David Rockwell has framed the musical with a responsive unit set filled with moving parts, bells and whistles that serves the story within it. There is no room for modesty, however, in the flashy and, indeed, wonderfully kinky creations designed for the drag queens by designer Gregg Barnes.
This vibrant and enjoyable musical not only has more memorable performances but also more muscle than did the film (notwithstanding the sturdy calves that dance and parade about) about a drag queen who turns around the fortunes of a long-established but failing shoe factory.
The fortunes of this musical ultimately reside to a large extent in the astonishingly sophisticated and melodic score composed by rock music genre's most adorable (my opinion) star. Lauper's songs pulsate with a gratifyingly empowerment through Fierstein's heart-warming, but also humorously gritty book. Lauper is making her Broadway debut as composer but also as a lyricist and many of the lyrics reveal her affinity for the poetic illusion. (see quote above).
Kinky Boots boasts a central diva-styled role that comes direct from the revered here-I-am-boys school of performing. There is little doubt from the time we meet the one-of-kind Lola, as played with a refreshingly pugnacious perspicacity by a sensational Billy Porter, that whatever Lola wants, she is likely to get. But it has to be with the help of Charlie (Stark Sands), the factory's young and insecure owner. As the inheritor of his recently deceased father's long-established but now failing business, Sands is not only an engaging and splendid singer and actor but he also strikes a nice balance of power in the light of Porter's obligatory flamboyance. But as we see in Kinky Boots, not all drag queens are alike.
Lola gives us a particularly poignant perspective of a man who has found his niche. We see him as ten-year-old Simon (Marquise Neal) who would rather put on his mother's red high-heeled shoes than become the tough, manly prize-fighter that his father is training him to be. Putting on the shoes, the talented young Mr. Neal belts a short refrain from "The Most Beautiful Thing" out of the park.
Motivated by Lola, who has gives up her job performing in a London club, The Blue Angel, to become his designer, Charlie has to not only deal with the disintegrating relationship with his self-centered and unsupportive fiancée Nicola (Celina Carvajal) who wants Charlie to sell the business and move with her to London, but also with the anxiety of the workers who worry that their jobs are at stake.
Standouts among them are Lauren, who, as played by a delightfully idiosyncratic Annaleigh Ashford and Don (a super performance by Daniel Stewart Sherman) as the bearish homophobe who challenges Lola to a fight at the local Fisticuff's Bar. This cleverly devised, if also somewhat silly scene, is played within a ring and serves as a cap, as well as a surprise, after we have seen the young Lola/Simon practicing his sparring earlier in the show.
The bevy of queens, known at the Angels, dress up the stage as characters, and also tear it up as they dig in those heels as a dynamic dancing Greek chorus. The scene in which the haut-couture-d Angels make a visit to the factory and assure the workers that they have something to strive for is a dancing highlight as part of it is performed on conveyor belts, as exciting as the song that drives it, "Sex is in the Heel." "What a Woman Wants," a particularly funny song for them in Act II, in which they challenge the men's ideas about masculinity is another show-stopping winner.
Although it does seem to come out of the blue,the musical's biggest dramatic jolt involves Charlie's change in attitude toward Lola, a change that will undergo some convolutions in regard to accepting each other for who they are. The one song that affects us deeply and emotionally is "I'm Not My Father's Son." It gives us an insight into Charlie's attempt to disassociate himself from his father's legacy, as it also, through its dual musical narrative, considers the torment behind Lola's decision to stand up and be his own man.
But be assured that all will be resolved to everyone's satisfaction by the time the factory's collection of high fetish-fashioned boots hit the runway in Milan for a finale with an a obligatory rousing number, "Raise You Up/Just Be." It's designated to make you cheer. And you will.
Lauper and Feinstein have proven themselves fortuitously formidable partners who have found a formula that has transformed a so-what film into a so-fine musical.
The Winter's Tale
McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ Review based on performance April 5, 2013
So who knew that Bohemia was a playground for huge rainbow-hued butterflies? And who could suspect that the simple and celebratory-minded country-folk who also frolic there among their sheep would look like exiles from Dogpatch. Even the pretty blonde ingenue, oops I mean shepherdess, looks as if she were kin to Daisy Mae. But I'm rushing the plot a bit as things start off a lot less colorfully and, indeed, more dourly in the neutral palate palace in Sicilia where begins Director Rebecca Taichman's visionary staging of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.
Anyone familiar with Taichman's beautifully conceptualized, wondrously clever even coy direction of Sleeping Beauty Awakes, and Twelfth Night" for the McCarter Theatre as well as with her memorable 2010 Off Broadway direction of Orlando, will also admire her adventurous approach to a play that many have considered as one of the Bard's lesser works.
Let's dispel that notion of it being lesser, despite the judicious pruning of the text and the elimination of minor characters, in the light of Taichman's magical treatment of the convoluted, preposterous plot with its essentially unmotivated exposition. Seen from her surreal perspective and through the unaffected but dramatically taut acting of her company, immersion into the plot isn't all that difficult. A significant part of the immersion is due to designer Christopher Akerlind's mood-enhancing lighting, especially a spectacularly lighted finale that is not to die for but to live for.
Shakespeare reveals his melodramatic hand early on. To be sure, there is more behavioral idiocy than psychological profundity in the story. What is profoundly chilling is the performance by Mark Harelik as Leontes the king of Sicilia, who suddenly goes mad with jealousy because he suspects and then accuses, for no more reason than a smile and an affectionate touch, the visibly very pregnant Queen Hermione of having had an affair with Polixenes, their house guest, his best friend, the king of Bohemia. A brilliant directorial touch is letting us see what Leontes imagines he is seeing in a series of freeze frames involving Hermione and Polixenes. We may surmise, as Shakespeare did, that even best friends can overstay their welcome.
Paradoxically, after the play's first half in which we see how a distressingly paranoid monarch wittingly slanders, humiliates, alienates, and even destroys most everyone he holds dear, we are treated to a second half all bathed in a sweetly sheep-shearing light, and resolved to making everyone live happily ever after. Perhaps, not one of Shakespeare's greatest hits, but this The Winter's Tale makes up for its lack of coherence and cohesiveness in its inexplicable ability to entertain.
Taichman intrigues and entertains us with a production that starts off like a modern-dress concert-staging with some of the actors attending admirably and without affectation to the text's rushes of exquisite lyricism while those not involved sit in chairs in the back of designer Christine Jones's starkly handsome unit setting that serves in Sicilia as a spacious uncluttered palace room and as a meadow in Bohemia.
The spin that Taichman puts on her modernist approach is seen in the joyous behavior of the residents of Bohemia, whose faces we recognize belonging to the characters in Sicilia. It's a lark to see six of the nine actors suddenly show up romancing and romping about in designer David Zinn's loopy costumes in a setting whose primary reference to the pastoral is limited to a large painting of a green meadow and some cardboard cut-outs of sheep. For our added pleasure, a trio of drunken musicians and the assembled shepherds and shepherdesses engage in the obligatory merry dance.
Although it is hard to forgive Leontes for his mindless, impetuous stupidity, the character comes back to haunt us. The difficult-to-swallow redemption of Leontes presents a challenge that Harelik eventually meets. But until this happens late in the play, we see him take his rage to an extreme, throwing his body on the floor in a convulsive fit of laughter after being refuted by the Oracle. What a dramatic turnabout for Harelik who, in the midst of all his anguish, is also assigned to delight us with some delectable scenery-chewing in the role of Autolycus, a roguish, one-eyed thief and ballad-monger.
Sean Arbuckle is excellent as the gallant but maligned Polixenes, as is Brent Carver, as Leonte's trusted counselor Camillo. Getting her say is Nancy Robinette as Paula, the court loudmouth and as a drunken Shepardess. So does theater veteran Ted van Griethuysen, as Paulina's husband. Hannah Yelland's display of patience-in-adversity as that "precious creature" Hermione is heart-breaking. Heather Wood as the long-lost daughter Perdita, and Todd Bartels as the a-wooing Prince Florizel are atypically disarming the lovesick teens.
With its romantic innocence tainted by morbid undertones and its gorgeous poetry tested by melodramatic excess, "The Winter's Tale" makes uncompromised appreciation difficult. However, Taichman's ability to give us "The Winter's Tale" with equal parts chills and charms is sure to win fans. There will likely be additional fans for this fantastical tale about the healing power of love as it has been so beautifully produced by McCarter in association with The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. where it will move following this engagement.
The Winter's Tale - Opened 04/05/13 Ends 04/21/13
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Breakfast at Tiffany's
As we sauntered along 48th Street on our way to the venerable Cort
Theatre, we noticed a handsome plump tabby being held snuggly in a
blanket in the arms of its escort. Instinctively a friend who was also
headed to the play yelled out, "Are you going on stage tonight? Break a
paw." Wouldn't you know that the sly puss slowly turned its head around
blinked and glared at her, as if to say, "Where else would I be going
on this chilly night?"
Cat and escort disappeared through the stage door entrance, where Vito Vincent (as identified in the program credits) evidently did warm up or lap up. At any rate, he gave a memorable and totally mesmerizing performance that included a little extra turn-of-the-head toward his owner Holly Golightly.
Holly is played by the also beguiling if slightly less stage worthy Emilia Clarke, who is making her Broadway debut. Since Vincent who plays "Cat" is not really the star of Richard Greenberg's stage adaptation of Truman Capote's 1958 novella, I'll say no more about his supporting although significant role except that he out-classes and out-performs many of the actors. As directed by Sean Mathias, most of the support players seem to believe that becoming grotesque caricatures would help define them in this Holly's shallow, stupefying world.
It isn't easy to get the image of Holly's most famous and adored interpreter Audrey Hepburn out of one's mind, or of the utterly romantic mood (be it ever so wrong) created by director Blake Edward's for his 1961 film version. I was marginally gratified by the colder, more depressing vision that Greenberg and Mathias, as well as scenic designer Derek McLane and projectionist Wendall K. Harrington have created to bring us back unromantically to the novel's time period New York City in 1943, 1944 and 1957.
The last date is the point of departure for the flashbacks as recalled by Fred (Cory Michael Smith). As the play's narrator and Holly's erstwhile friend and Capote's alter ego, he is by 1957 is a successful writer. We thus see him return to the East Side neighborhood bar and frequent hangout for Holly and her entourage where he is seen bathed in the drearily atmospheric glow provided for most of the play by lighting designer Peter Kaczorowsky. George Wendt gives a very nice performance as Joe Bell, the bartender with a crush on Holly.
But given the wonderful views of the city — the vintage photos of (some recognizable) Stork Club-ers, theater marquees, even sailors on the prowl that are indeed atmospheric — the sliding panels that expose the episodic and thematically redundant goings-on are not all that compelling. Yet within the dingy brownstone building where Fred, who is gay, becomes infatuated with the flighty, unmercifully mercenary, free-spirited party girl known as Holly, there are fleeting moments in which Capote's prose takes flight.
Fred provides a genuinely fascinating and extremely personable ho ok into Holly's world, be it ever so humble for a (sshh don't say it out loud) hooker. For Smith, who was terrific in both The Cockfight Play and The Whale Off Broadway, this is an impressive Broadway debut. It's both curious and wonderful that the actor puts Fred in the somewhat perverse situation of making us care more about him than we do about that twit who managed to fascinate him. His warm Southern drawl is as affecting as is his personable narration that brings forth memories of Tom in The Glass Menagerie. When it comes to allusions to other dramatic relationships, Fred's and Holly's bonding is remarkably similar to that of Cliff Bradshaw and Sally Bowles in Cabaret.
Holly, that misplaced girl from Tulip, Texas, is slim and attractive and looks quite appealing in Colleen Atwoods's not overly pretentious attire (forget about Hepburn in Givenchy). Though Clarke's performance is overly shrill and superficially manufactured performance, there is a glint of innocent sophistication that makes her a reasonable prospect for the many unattractive, wealthy, and foolish men who will vie for her favors and keep her solvent.
Fred, although smitten by Holly in his own way, is no innocent when it comes to finding sex in the city (he gets fired for having sex in the stock room of the New Yorker Magazine). He and Holly have a nice but completely unnecessary in-the-nude rendezvous in a bathtub without the suds, emotional or otherwise.
It's hard to fathom why the producers would want Mathias, who directed a different but failed version, of the story in London ( Curtainup's review ) to try his hand again when a completely fresh approach would seem the better choice. Not that any previous attempt has worked. Some might recall the 1966 musical version that starred Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Chamberlain that closed during preview.
I can't help but wonder of how long it will take to get the memory out of my mind of all those impossible-to-watch supporting players (some who I have been seen to better advantage) who have been made to portray the host of hideous and revolting characters that populate (or is it pollute?) Holly's soirees?
Where's that darn cat when we need it? Meow!
Breakfast at Tiffany's
By Richard Greenberg, adapted from the novella by Truman Capote
Directed by Sean Mathias
Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street
800-432-7250 or 212-239-6200
Tickets: $37.00 - $132.00
Performances: Tuesday at 7 pm, Wednesday at 2 pm and 7 pm, Thursday at 7 pm, Friday at 8 pm, Saturday at 2 pm and 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm.
From 03/04/13 Opened 03/2013
Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 03/21/13
Cat and escort disappeared through the stage door entrance, where Vito Vincent (as identified in the program credits) evidently did warm up or lap up. At any rate, he gave a memorable and totally mesmerizing performance that included a little extra turn-of-the-head toward his owner Holly Golightly.
Holly is played by the also beguiling if slightly less stage worthy Emilia Clarke, who is making her Broadway debut. Since Vincent who plays "Cat" is not really the star of Richard Greenberg's stage adaptation of Truman Capote's 1958 novella, I'll say no more about his supporting although significant role except that he out-classes and out-performs many of the actors. As directed by Sean Mathias, most of the support players seem to believe that becoming grotesque caricatures would help define them in this Holly's shallow, stupefying world.
It isn't easy to get the image of Holly's most famous and adored interpreter Audrey Hepburn out of one's mind, or of the utterly romantic mood (be it ever so wrong) created by director Blake Edward's for his 1961 film version. I was marginally gratified by the colder, more depressing vision that Greenberg and Mathias, as well as scenic designer Derek McLane and projectionist Wendall K. Harrington have created to bring us back unromantically to the novel's time period New York City in 1943, 1944 and 1957.
The last date is the point of departure for the flashbacks as recalled by Fred (Cory Michael Smith). As the play's narrator and Holly's erstwhile friend and Capote's alter ego, he is by 1957 is a successful writer. We thus see him return to the East Side neighborhood bar and frequent hangout for Holly and her entourage where he is seen bathed in the drearily atmospheric glow provided for most of the play by lighting designer Peter Kaczorowsky. George Wendt gives a very nice performance as Joe Bell, the bartender with a crush on Holly.
But given the wonderful views of the city — the vintage photos of (some recognizable) Stork Club-ers, theater marquees, even sailors on the prowl that are indeed atmospheric — the sliding panels that expose the episodic and thematically redundant goings-on are not all that compelling. Yet within the dingy brownstone building where Fred, who is gay, becomes infatuated with the flighty, unmercifully mercenary, free-spirited party girl known as Holly, there are fleeting moments in which Capote's prose takes flight.
Fred provides a genuinely fascinating and extremely personable ho ok into Holly's world, be it ever so humble for a (sshh don't say it out loud) hooker. For Smith, who was terrific in both The Cockfight Play and The Whale Off Broadway, this is an impressive Broadway debut. It's both curious and wonderful that the actor puts Fred in the somewhat perverse situation of making us care more about him than we do about that twit who managed to fascinate him. His warm Southern drawl is as affecting as is his personable narration that brings forth memories of Tom in The Glass Menagerie. When it comes to allusions to other dramatic relationships, Fred's and Holly's bonding is remarkably similar to that of Cliff Bradshaw and Sally Bowles in Cabaret.
Holly, that misplaced girl from Tulip, Texas, is slim and attractive and looks quite appealing in Colleen Atwoods's not overly pretentious attire (forget about Hepburn in Givenchy). Though Clarke's performance is overly shrill and superficially manufactured performance, there is a glint of innocent sophistication that makes her a reasonable prospect for the many unattractive, wealthy, and foolish men who will vie for her favors and keep her solvent.
Fred, although smitten by Holly in his own way, is no innocent when it comes to finding sex in the city (he gets fired for having sex in the stock room of the New Yorker Magazine). He and Holly have a nice but completely unnecessary in-the-nude rendezvous in a bathtub without the suds, emotional or otherwise.
It's hard to fathom why the producers would want Mathias, who directed a different but failed version, of the story in London ( Curtainup's review ) to try his hand again when a completely fresh approach would seem the better choice. Not that any previous attempt has worked. Some might recall the 1966 musical version that starred Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Chamberlain that closed during preview.
I can't help but wonder of how long it will take to get the memory out of my mind of all those impossible-to-watch supporting players (some who I have been seen to better advantage) who have been made to portray the host of hideous and revolting characters that populate (or is it pollute?) Holly's soirees?
Where's that darn cat when we need it? Meow!
Breakfast at Tiffany's
By Richard Greenberg, adapted from the novella by Truman Capote
Directed by Sean Mathias
Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street
800-432-7250 or 212-239-6200
Tickets: $37.00 - $132.00
Performances: Tuesday at 7 pm, Wednesday at 2 pm and 7 pm, Thursday at 7 pm, Friday at 8 pm, Saturday at 2 pm and 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm.
From 03/04/13 Opened 03/2013
Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 03/21/13
The Mound Builders
There is the aura of a very old B movie here, say from around the very
late 1920s, when long stretches of dialogue were spoken by people
talking to or at each other mostly from stationary positions so the
actors would not to leave the area where microphones were carefully
placed and hidden. It was quite a novelty at one time just to hear the
sound of the human voice.
But there's no novelty in the tedium that comes from listening to the endlessly pontificating science-saturated characters in Lanford Wilson's 1975 play The Mound Builders. That's even if they actually do get to move a bit about their quarters.
In these characters' various fields of highly qualified expertise, questions are posed and answered at great length. Questions range from whether archaeologists ought to or ought not take their wives and relatives on digs, and whether ancient Indian burial grounds should make way for a modern hotel and highways.
If the dialogue is what's 0meant to be the saving grace of this protracted talkfest, it isn't. The exception is when it is being spoken by the least erudite and intellectually bright character in the interesting actor Will Rogers. Rogers, who was nominated for a Drama Desk Award in 2012 for his work in Unnatural Acts at Classic Stage Company, plays the outsider — a local who has tentatively ingratiated himself among a small group of scientists, their wives, one eleven-year-old daughter and one of the scientist's loony sister.
The group, led by archeologist Professor August Howe (David Conrad), has gotten permission to return to a section of the Blue Shoals area of Illinois owned by Chad's father to continue their archeological research and the necessary digging for buried artifacts and treasures of an ancient civilization. Surprise, surprise! It is Howe's assistant, Dr. Dan Loggins (Zachary Booth), who is figuratively and literally destined to be sacrificed to the ancient gods in this tediously philosophical play?
The events leading up to the tragic finale are presented through flashback, as narrated by a droning Conrad. His talk is illustrated with some authentic-looking slides of a dig, as well as with flashes of his family at work and at play.
The play appears mainly concerned with Chad's growing apathy and distrust towards the various occupants of the household as well as his increasing anxiety about reaping hoped for financial gain by putting up a hotel on the excavation site. But anxiety doesn't stop the increasingly unhinged Chad from having a furtive sexual dalliance with Howe's restless wife and professional photographer Cynthia (Janie Brookshire); lusting rather brazenly after Dan's pregnant gynecologist wife Dr. Jean Loggins (Lisa Joyce); and once, after a fishing expedition, even attempting to seduce a very drunk Dan.
Rachel Resheff is fine as the eleven-year-old Kirsten, who appears mature enough to ignore what's obviously going on. Would that we had her option?
Most undeniably un-hinged of all these peple them all is Howe's presumably convalescing sister Delia (Danielle Skraastad). She's a successful writer and international gadabout who, full of self-pity and self-loathing, mostly sits on the sofa being critical of everyone and everything when she isn't simply looking as if she is in a state of mind somewhere between crazed and dazed.
The interior of the wooden cabin setting designed by Neil Patel survives the violent rain storm and the ensuing rage (as perpetrated by the terrific Rogers) that marks better Act II that follow the interminable and boring Act I.
Jo Bonney's direction of this play is undoubtedly responsive to Wilson's gift for lyrical realism. So too are the actors in their efforts to excavate and resuscitate Wilson's often poetic, but mainly gimme-a-break, dialogue.
More important than knowing why the ancients were compelled to build mounds is why the powers that be at The Pershing Square Signature Theater thought this of the many fine plays by Wilson (Talley's Folly is a lovely play now being given a splendid revival at the Roundabout's Laura Pel Theater) was the one most worthy of digging up.
The Mound Builders By Lanford Wilson Directed by Jo Bonney
Cast: David Conrad (Professor August Howe), Janie Brookshire (Cynthia Howe), Rachel Resheff (Kirsten), Will Rogers (Chad Jasker), Zachardy Booth (Dr. Dan Loggins), Lisa Joyce (Dr. Jean Loggins), Danielle Skraastad (Delia Eriksen)
Scenic Design: Neil Patel
Costume Design: Theresa Squire
Lighting Design: Rui Rita
Sound Design: Darron L. West
Running Time: 2 hours 15 minutes including intermission
The Romulus Linney Courthouse Theater at the Pershing Square Signature Theater, 480 West 42nd Street
(212) 244 - 7529
Tickets: $25.00
Performances: Tuesday through Friday at 7:30PM; Saturday at 8PM; Matinees at 2PM on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday.
From 02/26/13 Opened 03/17/13 Ends 04/14/13
Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 03/20/13
But there's no novelty in the tedium that comes from listening to the endlessly pontificating science-saturated characters in Lanford Wilson's 1975 play The Mound Builders. That's even if they actually do get to move a bit about their quarters.
In these characters' various fields of highly qualified expertise, questions are posed and answered at great length. Questions range from whether archaeologists ought to or ought not take their wives and relatives on digs, and whether ancient Indian burial grounds should make way for a modern hotel and highways.
If the dialogue is what's 0meant to be the saving grace of this protracted talkfest, it isn't. The exception is when it is being spoken by the least erudite and intellectually bright character in the interesting actor Will Rogers. Rogers, who was nominated for a Drama Desk Award in 2012 for his work in Unnatural Acts at Classic Stage Company, plays the outsider — a local who has tentatively ingratiated himself among a small group of scientists, their wives, one eleven-year-old daughter and one of the scientist's loony sister.
The group, led by archeologist Professor August Howe (David Conrad), has gotten permission to return to a section of the Blue Shoals area of Illinois owned by Chad's father to continue their archeological research and the necessary digging for buried artifacts and treasures of an ancient civilization. Surprise, surprise! It is Howe's assistant, Dr. Dan Loggins (Zachary Booth), who is figuratively and literally destined to be sacrificed to the ancient gods in this tediously philosophical play?
The events leading up to the tragic finale are presented through flashback, as narrated by a droning Conrad. His talk is illustrated with some authentic-looking slides of a dig, as well as with flashes of his family at work and at play.
The play appears mainly concerned with Chad's growing apathy and distrust towards the various occupants of the household as well as his increasing anxiety about reaping hoped for financial gain by putting up a hotel on the excavation site. But anxiety doesn't stop the increasingly unhinged Chad from having a furtive sexual dalliance with Howe's restless wife and professional photographer Cynthia (Janie Brookshire); lusting rather brazenly after Dan's pregnant gynecologist wife Dr. Jean Loggins (Lisa Joyce); and once, after a fishing expedition, even attempting to seduce a very drunk Dan.
Rachel Resheff is fine as the eleven-year-old Kirsten, who appears mature enough to ignore what's obviously going on. Would that we had her option?
Most undeniably un-hinged of all these peple them all is Howe's presumably convalescing sister Delia (Danielle Skraastad). She's a successful writer and international gadabout who, full of self-pity and self-loathing, mostly sits on the sofa being critical of everyone and everything when she isn't simply looking as if she is in a state of mind somewhere between crazed and dazed.
The interior of the wooden cabin setting designed by Neil Patel survives the violent rain storm and the ensuing rage (as perpetrated by the terrific Rogers) that marks better Act II that follow the interminable and boring Act I.
Jo Bonney's direction of this play is undoubtedly responsive to Wilson's gift for lyrical realism. So too are the actors in their efforts to excavate and resuscitate Wilson's often poetic, but mainly gimme-a-break, dialogue.
More important than knowing why the ancients were compelled to build mounds is why the powers that be at The Pershing Square Signature Theater thought this of the many fine plays by Wilson (Talley's Folly is a lovely play now being given a splendid revival at the Roundabout's Laura Pel Theater) was the one most worthy of digging up.
The Mound Builders By Lanford Wilson Directed by Jo Bonney
Cast: David Conrad (Professor August Howe), Janie Brookshire (Cynthia Howe), Rachel Resheff (Kirsten), Will Rogers (Chad Jasker), Zachardy Booth (Dr. Dan Loggins), Lisa Joyce (Dr. Jean Loggins), Danielle Skraastad (Delia Eriksen)
Scenic Design: Neil Patel
Costume Design: Theresa Squire
Lighting Design: Rui Rita
Sound Design: Darron L. West
Running Time: 2 hours 15 minutes including intermission
The Romulus Linney Courthouse Theater at the Pershing Square Signature Theater, 480 West 42nd Street
(212) 244 - 7529
Tickets: $25.00
Performances: Tuesday through Friday at 7:30PM; Saturday at 8PM; Matinees at 2PM on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday.
From 02/26/13 Opened 03/17/13 Ends 04/14/13
Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 03/20/13
Hands on a Hard Body
Staring for almost two and one half hours at a bright shiny new Nissan
pick-up truck with no other inanimate object or scenic distraction in
view isn't something that might seem like the best option for someone
seeking a diverting theatrical experience. But if that truck at the
center of the stage of the Brooks Atkinson Theater doesn't come
accessorized with a heart and soul, the people who gather around it do
and prove to be quite a novel and often rewarding diversion.
This truck that turns and gets pushed around is not only the object of desire for a group of needy, poor, and disillusioned Texans, but a symbol of hope and survival. It is certainly the visual focal point for us in the new musical Hands on a Hard Body.
The point is that there is plenty of heart and soul being revealed in this small-scaled musical about ordinary people with big feelings. These feelings declarative of their wishes and woes, are expressed through a truck-load of terrific songs by Trey Anastasio (music) and Amanda Green (lyrics and music).
Anastasio, who is a founding member of the rock group Phish as well as being named by Rolling Stone as one of the great guitarists of all time, has made a memorable musical theater debut with sixteen songs that prove him to be a real melodist. Green, the daughter of the incomparable Adolph Green (Singin' in the Rain etc.), delivers her finest work yet following her impressive lyrical contributions to the exuberant Bring It On earlier this season, and as she did previously with her debut show High Fidelity.
The show is inspired by a 1997 documentary film of the same title in which a limited number of people were able to enter a contest through a lottery sponsored by a local Texas auto dealership to promote business. Yet, this is one musical that could be said to be totally original in form, content and style. It's all about the one who can keep one of his gloved hands on the truck, allowing for fifteen-minute-breaks every six hours and a five minute break every hour will win the truck — no leaning or sitting down allowed.
But this is more than an endurance contest for the hard-scrabble and scrappy real life characters from whom book writer Doug Wright drew his inspiration. We watch each in his and her own way — with whatever mental, physical, and spiritual strength, even rage and defiance, muster the strength to survive the heat, stress and strain to end up the winner— and remain sane. Wright most celebrated as the author of I Am My Own Wife (Pulitzer Prize and Tony) and Grey Gardens, has probably succeeded as well as possible to connect the dots of these people's private and personal lives into one collectively unified experience. Despite its fragmented plot, Hands on a Hard Body is harmlessly enjoyable.
Aside from the two contentious co-managers of the dealership, a radio announcer, a doctor and an outside entertainer, there are the mostly out-of-work contestants who bring their anxieties, dreams and despair to the fore. Also at the fore, is the exciting and clever staging by Sergio Trujillo that keeps not only bodies in motion, but also that darn truck.
One has to assume that it is Neil Pepe's direction that has tied the variously emotional and ingratiating elements of this unique musical into a cohesive whole. If there is a sense of wholeness and unity of purpose in highlighting the plight of the various contestants, there is also a strange feeling that the key characters are not the most interesting, or the ones who manage to illicit our strongest emotional ties. This is a musical filled with colorful, courageous, and pitiful souls, but surprisingly we never feel connected to or compelled to root for the two most central characters. It takes courage to actually frame a musical around a contest in which we have no collective stake in the outcome for a central character.
The text does give added weight and time to the misfortunes of two characters: Middle-aged JD Drew (Keith Carradine), who fell off an oil rig, suffered a broken leg and was fired with no pension to support him or his wife Virginia (Mary Gordon Murray) . . . and Benny Perkins (Hunter Foster), who is tormented by the suicide of his son, a young marine, as well as by the fact that his wife ran off with another man in the truck that Benny won the year before. Carradine does sing, along with Murray, one of the score's most beautiful ballads "Alone With Me" in which is expressed his sense that he failed himself and his wife.
Carradine's twangy voice is appealing and suits his role. If there is a pivotal role it belongs to Perkins. As played with a demonstrably antagonist attitude by the formidably talented Foster (almost didn't recognize him). He is an anti-hero who is inexplicably out front and center as a kind of jaded binder to the already loose narrative without any indication that he might eventually win our empathy. Yet, there is little about either of these two men, their sorrows or their situations that give them an edge over the feelings we begin to have for the others.
A bevy of stand-out characters include Norma Valverde (Keala Settle). She's heavy-set, religious woman who lets her religiosity reach an ecstatic peak (quite a demonstration of out-of-control laughter), as well as instigating a high spirited gospel number. There's also Chris (David Larsen), an angry, maladjusted ex-marine; Jesus Peña (Jon Rua), Ronald (Jacob Ming-Trent) an African-American who loves the heat, but it doesn't love him; a young Mexican-American who dreams of going to veterinary school; Heather Stovall (Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone), the pretty and sexy blonde who hopes to win by seducing the dealership's manager Frank Nugent (Scott Wakefield).
I was most impressed and emotionally involved with a young man and woman, disarmingly portrayed by Jay Armstrong Johnson and Allison Case. The pair meet hands on at the truck, fall in love and with hands-off start a life together.
Interestingly, there is more tension built up in the desperate manager whose dealership is on the verge of being closed than in the contest. His unethical shenanigans do not go unnoticed by Cindy Barnes (Connie Ray) his racist, no-nonsense co-worker. And Heather's shenanigans do not go unnoticed by a feisty Janice Curtis (Dale Soules), who leads a rebellion with "It's a Fix." You get the picture.
This picture created by the talented collaborators within the inauspicious setting by designer Christine Jones falls short of being a really great show without an in-depth focus on its principal characters. It is, nevertheless, an often stirring collage depicting the undaunted spirit of the American dreamer, or as the rousing final song advises, "Keep Your Hands On It."
Hands on a Hard Body
Book by Doug Wright (based on a film by S.R. Bindler)
Lyrics by Amanda Green
Music by Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green
Directed by Neil Pepe
Musical Staging by Sergfio Trujillo
Brooks Atkinson Theater, 265 West 47th Street
(877) 250 - 2929
Tickets: $55.00 - $$155.00
Performances: Monday at 7:30pm, Tuesday at 7:30pm, Wednesday at 2pm and 7:30pm, Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm
From 02/23/13 Opened 03/21/13
Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 03/19/13
This truck that turns and gets pushed around is not only the object of desire for a group of needy, poor, and disillusioned Texans, but a symbol of hope and survival. It is certainly the visual focal point for us in the new musical Hands on a Hard Body.
The point is that there is plenty of heart and soul being revealed in this small-scaled musical about ordinary people with big feelings. These feelings declarative of their wishes and woes, are expressed through a truck-load of terrific songs by Trey Anastasio (music) and Amanda Green (lyrics and music).
Anastasio, who is a founding member of the rock group Phish as well as being named by Rolling Stone as one of the great guitarists of all time, has made a memorable musical theater debut with sixteen songs that prove him to be a real melodist. Green, the daughter of the incomparable Adolph Green (Singin' in the Rain etc.), delivers her finest work yet following her impressive lyrical contributions to the exuberant Bring It On earlier this season, and as she did previously with her debut show High Fidelity.
The show is inspired by a 1997 documentary film of the same title in which a limited number of people were able to enter a contest through a lottery sponsored by a local Texas auto dealership to promote business. Yet, this is one musical that could be said to be totally original in form, content and style. It's all about the one who can keep one of his gloved hands on the truck, allowing for fifteen-minute-breaks every six hours and a five minute break every hour will win the truck — no leaning or sitting down allowed.
But this is more than an endurance contest for the hard-scrabble and scrappy real life characters from whom book writer Doug Wright drew his inspiration. We watch each in his and her own way — with whatever mental, physical, and spiritual strength, even rage and defiance, muster the strength to survive the heat, stress and strain to end up the winner— and remain sane. Wright most celebrated as the author of I Am My Own Wife (Pulitzer Prize and Tony) and Grey Gardens, has probably succeeded as well as possible to connect the dots of these people's private and personal lives into one collectively unified experience. Despite its fragmented plot, Hands on a Hard Body is harmlessly enjoyable.
Aside from the two contentious co-managers of the dealership, a radio announcer, a doctor and an outside entertainer, there are the mostly out-of-work contestants who bring their anxieties, dreams and despair to the fore. Also at the fore, is the exciting and clever staging by Sergio Trujillo that keeps not only bodies in motion, but also that darn truck.
One has to assume that it is Neil Pepe's direction that has tied the variously emotional and ingratiating elements of this unique musical into a cohesive whole. If there is a sense of wholeness and unity of purpose in highlighting the plight of the various contestants, there is also a strange feeling that the key characters are not the most interesting, or the ones who manage to illicit our strongest emotional ties. This is a musical filled with colorful, courageous, and pitiful souls, but surprisingly we never feel connected to or compelled to root for the two most central characters. It takes courage to actually frame a musical around a contest in which we have no collective stake in the outcome for a central character.
The text does give added weight and time to the misfortunes of two characters: Middle-aged JD Drew (Keith Carradine), who fell off an oil rig, suffered a broken leg and was fired with no pension to support him or his wife Virginia (Mary Gordon Murray) . . . and Benny Perkins (Hunter Foster), who is tormented by the suicide of his son, a young marine, as well as by the fact that his wife ran off with another man in the truck that Benny won the year before. Carradine does sing, along with Murray, one of the score's most beautiful ballads "Alone With Me" in which is expressed his sense that he failed himself and his wife.
Carradine's twangy voice is appealing and suits his role. If there is a pivotal role it belongs to Perkins. As played with a demonstrably antagonist attitude by the formidably talented Foster (almost didn't recognize him). He is an anti-hero who is inexplicably out front and center as a kind of jaded binder to the already loose narrative without any indication that he might eventually win our empathy. Yet, there is little about either of these two men, their sorrows or their situations that give them an edge over the feelings we begin to have for the others.
A bevy of stand-out characters include Norma Valverde (Keala Settle). She's heavy-set, religious woman who lets her religiosity reach an ecstatic peak (quite a demonstration of out-of-control laughter), as well as instigating a high spirited gospel number. There's also Chris (David Larsen), an angry, maladjusted ex-marine; Jesus Peña (Jon Rua), Ronald (Jacob Ming-Trent) an African-American who loves the heat, but it doesn't love him; a young Mexican-American who dreams of going to veterinary school; Heather Stovall (Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone), the pretty and sexy blonde who hopes to win by seducing the dealership's manager Frank Nugent (Scott Wakefield).
I was most impressed and emotionally involved with a young man and woman, disarmingly portrayed by Jay Armstrong Johnson and Allison Case. The pair meet hands on at the truck, fall in love and with hands-off start a life together.
Interestingly, there is more tension built up in the desperate manager whose dealership is on the verge of being closed than in the contest. His unethical shenanigans do not go unnoticed by Cindy Barnes (Connie Ray) his racist, no-nonsense co-worker. And Heather's shenanigans do not go unnoticed by a feisty Janice Curtis (Dale Soules), who leads a rebellion with "It's a Fix." You get the picture.
This picture created by the talented collaborators within the inauspicious setting by designer Christine Jones falls short of being a really great show without an in-depth focus on its principal characters. It is, nevertheless, an often stirring collage depicting the undaunted spirit of the American dreamer, or as the rousing final song advises, "Keep Your Hands On It."
Hands on a Hard Body
Book by Doug Wright (based on a film by S.R. Bindler)
Lyrics by Amanda Green
Music by Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green
Directed by Neil Pepe
Musical Staging by Sergfio Trujillo
Brooks Atkinson Theater, 265 West 47th Street
(877) 250 - 2929
Tickets: $55.00 - $$155.00
Performances: Monday at 7:30pm, Tuesday at 7:30pm, Wednesday at 2pm and 7:30pm, Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm
From 02/23/13 Opened 03/21/13
Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 03/19/13
Talley's Folly
Any modern play that can begin with "Once upon a time" better live up to
that pretension. Lanford Wilson's 1980 Pulitzer-Prize winning play
Talley's Folly most certainly does as it famously begins with one of the
most engaging monologues ever written as a preamble to the body of a
play. It is disarmingly delivered by Danny Burstein, as Matt Friedman, a
bespectacled Jewish accountant from St. Louis, in the sparkling revival
now at the Roundabout's Laura Pels Theater.
In that monologue, Matt reminds us more than once that it is a play in three-quarter time. And Burstein, the multi-award-winning actor who never seems to run out of ways to amaze us with his unorthodox charm and his unexpected displays of versatility whether either in musicals (Follies, South Pacific) or plays (Golden Boy) reminds us that he is the one to set the mood and the tone of this exactly "ninety-seven minute" (as he tells us) play.
The time is July 4, 1944 with the action taking place on the property of the Talley's ancestral home in Lebanon, Missouri. Essentially a romantic duet, Burstein's partner in Wilson's lyrical play is the terrific Sarah Paulson. She plays Sally Talley, the only other character — the woman who Matt loves.
Using a special blend of ethnic and colloquial humor, Wilson captures the heart and mind, as his two people metaphorically voyage beyond the confines of a dilapidated Victorian boathouse into a wondrous and enchanted reality that is as inspiring as it is entertaining.
The first thing one sees upon entering the Laura Pels Theater is the boathouse setting designed by Jeff Cowie, a breathtaking eyeful. With the house lights fully on, we can see the shell of a warped rowboat at rest within the rotting skeleton of the vine-encroaching boathouse and gazebo . . . victims of neglect. Within the expressionistic floral frame, the fantastical structure with its chipped gingerbread is bathed with the light of a glowing sunset. Eventually, as the evening progresses, the twinkling of the stars. Lighting designer Rui Rita works overtime for these wondrously romantic effects.
Matt enters even before the lights dim and talks to us. He wants to make it quite clear that we are in a theater, a completely artificial environment. As a genial host would make his visitors comfortable in his home, so Matt makes us settle back in our seats in this manufactured but convivial atmosphere. He is soon confiding in us as to why he has returned to woo and win a certain woman with whom he has had an earlier fling.
Matt can cue in the proper sound effects on command, notably the barking of a dog. At the performance I saw, his request for a dog barking brought a number of barks to which he said, "I didn't ask for a kennel." But who could not respond to his request? Even the moonlight responds to his will. A touching and completely believable romance is now played against this fairy tale setting. The magic of believing is proved in Wilson's warm, compassionate and always intelligent writing.
Fantasy and reality mix rather well when the author believes they can through characters that are as genuine as the person sitting next to you. Paulson, who more than held her own against the formidable Linda Lavin in the Broadway revival of Collected Stories, once again confidently makes memorable a role in which she is more responsive than aggressive as spinster Sally, the nurses' aide who has evidently become a disgrace to the Talley family. She charms Matt in the pretty new yellow print frock even as we can see that she is a bundle of anxiety and insecurity.
At first, we feel Sally is no match for Matt, who can dramatize and over dramatize his feelings with words Sally never heard before. But Sally has a strength that is finally tapped by this Galahad in a drab business suit enhanced by boldly patterned necktie that he has purchased for the occasion. Disarmingly funny in his clumsily clownish attempt to ice skate on the wooden planks of the dock, Matt nevertheless assumes a disquieting poignancy as he reveals to Sally his traumatic childhood, fleeing the Nazis in Europe. Replete with improvisations and jokes, he is a vaudevillian at heart, and with a heart that he wants to give to Sally.
While much of Burstein's performance as the bearded New York-accented Jew in a land of shotgun-toting Gentiles is warm, honest, and delightfully comedic, Paulson takes more time letting down her feisty façade. But when she does let her defenses down, her emotional transitions are intense and moving.
These lovingly combative people intimately involve us not only in their own rekindled relationship, but also by making us care about the lives of people not even seen on stage. When a play is as deceptively small scaled as this and so well written and performed, the direction could almost be inadvertently taken for granted. I choose not to take the excellent direction of Michael Wilson for granted.
When Talley's Folly first opened at the Circle Repertory Theater in 1979 (before it moved to Broadway) the play's original director Marshall W. Mason gave it what many consider to be the definitive and often imitated production. One can not only feel the play's forever lilting tempo in Wilson's vibrant new direction, but also the feel of freshness that comes from a director who reveres it but not as an embalmed classic.
Talley's Folly is the first play in a trilogy that includes The Fifth of July and A Tale Told which was later renamed Talley & Son. Now wouldn't it be nice to see all three plays in repertory, especially at the Roundabout Theater.
Talley's Folly
By Lanford Wilson
Directed by Michael Wilson
Roundabout Theater at the Laura Pels Theater, 111 W. 46th Street
(212) 719-1300
Tickets: $81.00
Performances: Tuesday, Thursday - Friday, 7:30PM, Wednesday & Saturday, 2PM & 7:30PM, Sunday, 2PM
From 02/08/13 Opened 03/05/13 Ends 05/12/13
Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 03/13/13
In that monologue, Matt reminds us more than once that it is a play in three-quarter time. And Burstein, the multi-award-winning actor who never seems to run out of ways to amaze us with his unorthodox charm and his unexpected displays of versatility whether either in musicals (Follies, South Pacific) or plays (Golden Boy) reminds us that he is the one to set the mood and the tone of this exactly "ninety-seven minute" (as he tells us) play.
The time is July 4, 1944 with the action taking place on the property of the Talley's ancestral home in Lebanon, Missouri. Essentially a romantic duet, Burstein's partner in Wilson's lyrical play is the terrific Sarah Paulson. She plays Sally Talley, the only other character — the woman who Matt loves.
Using a special blend of ethnic and colloquial humor, Wilson captures the heart and mind, as his two people metaphorically voyage beyond the confines of a dilapidated Victorian boathouse into a wondrous and enchanted reality that is as inspiring as it is entertaining.
The first thing one sees upon entering the Laura Pels Theater is the boathouse setting designed by Jeff Cowie, a breathtaking eyeful. With the house lights fully on, we can see the shell of a warped rowboat at rest within the rotting skeleton of the vine-encroaching boathouse and gazebo . . . victims of neglect. Within the expressionistic floral frame, the fantastical structure with its chipped gingerbread is bathed with the light of a glowing sunset. Eventually, as the evening progresses, the twinkling of the stars. Lighting designer Rui Rita works overtime for these wondrously romantic effects.
Matt enters even before the lights dim and talks to us. He wants to make it quite clear that we are in a theater, a completely artificial environment. As a genial host would make his visitors comfortable in his home, so Matt makes us settle back in our seats in this manufactured but convivial atmosphere. He is soon confiding in us as to why he has returned to woo and win a certain woman with whom he has had an earlier fling.
Matt can cue in the proper sound effects on command, notably the barking of a dog. At the performance I saw, his request for a dog barking brought a number of barks to which he said, "I didn't ask for a kennel." But who could not respond to his request? Even the moonlight responds to his will. A touching and completely believable romance is now played against this fairy tale setting. The magic of believing is proved in Wilson's warm, compassionate and always intelligent writing.
Fantasy and reality mix rather well when the author believes they can through characters that are as genuine as the person sitting next to you. Paulson, who more than held her own against the formidable Linda Lavin in the Broadway revival of Collected Stories, once again confidently makes memorable a role in which she is more responsive than aggressive as spinster Sally, the nurses' aide who has evidently become a disgrace to the Talley family. She charms Matt in the pretty new yellow print frock even as we can see that she is a bundle of anxiety and insecurity.
At first, we feel Sally is no match for Matt, who can dramatize and over dramatize his feelings with words Sally never heard before. But Sally has a strength that is finally tapped by this Galahad in a drab business suit enhanced by boldly patterned necktie that he has purchased for the occasion. Disarmingly funny in his clumsily clownish attempt to ice skate on the wooden planks of the dock, Matt nevertheless assumes a disquieting poignancy as he reveals to Sally his traumatic childhood, fleeing the Nazis in Europe. Replete with improvisations and jokes, he is a vaudevillian at heart, and with a heart that he wants to give to Sally.
While much of Burstein's performance as the bearded New York-accented Jew in a land of shotgun-toting Gentiles is warm, honest, and delightfully comedic, Paulson takes more time letting down her feisty façade. But when she does let her defenses down, her emotional transitions are intense and moving.
These lovingly combative people intimately involve us not only in their own rekindled relationship, but also by making us care about the lives of people not even seen on stage. When a play is as deceptively small scaled as this and so well written and performed, the direction could almost be inadvertently taken for granted. I choose not to take the excellent direction of Michael Wilson for granted.
When Talley's Folly first opened at the Circle Repertory Theater in 1979 (before it moved to Broadway) the play's original director Marshall W. Mason gave it what many consider to be the definitive and often imitated production. One can not only feel the play's forever lilting tempo in Wilson's vibrant new direction, but also the feel of freshness that comes from a director who reveres it but not as an embalmed classic.
Talley's Folly is the first play in a trilogy that includes The Fifth of July and A Tale Told which was later renamed Talley & Son. Now wouldn't it be nice to see all three plays in repertory, especially at the Roundabout Theater.
Talley's Folly
By Lanford Wilson
Directed by Michael Wilson
Roundabout Theater at the Laura Pels Theater, 111 W. 46th Street
(212) 719-1300
Tickets: $81.00
Performances: Tuesday, Thursday - Friday, 7:30PM, Wednesday & Saturday, 2PM & 7:30PM, Sunday, 2PM
From 02/08/13 Opened 03/05/13 Ends 05/12/13
Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 03/13/13
The Flick
It isn't always easy to pinpoint exactly what there is about the style,
craft or even the perspective of a young up-and-coming playwright that
makes them the darling of the critics as well as the public almost
overnight. The now thirty-one-year-old Annie Baker became just that in
2009 with Circle Mirror Transformation (see links below), about a
group of generally unremarkable people who become personally involved
in each others lives while playing theater games at a community center.
The mostly positive response to it following its premiere at Playwrights
Horizons was unprecedented, as it proceeded to become one of the most
frequently produced plays in regional theaters.
Baker, whose other plays have also been lauded for their informally structured, protracted naturalistic style, may perhaps be demanding a lot, especially from one segment of the audience, with her new and exceedingly long and yet ultimately remarkable new play in which movie games replace theater games. The Flick has been afforded a cleverly designed (by David Zinn) production at Playwrights Horizons where the setting for all the action is the interior of a small neighborhood movie house in central Massachusetts. Our perspective of the stage from where the screen would be; in other words, we face the raked rows of seats and the back wall of the theater with a view into the tiny window of the projection booth.
Continuing her association with her director of choice and close collaborator Sam Gold, Baker is fortunate to have found someone who knows how to transfer what could appear as an exercise in excessive self-indulgence into a compelling theatrical experience. Whereas Circle Mirror Transformation took an hour and forty five minutes to complete its purposefully redundant dramatic convolutions, The Flick takes three full hours — or I should say three pause-saturated hours to wend its way to its conclusion. A poignant one! This play, much more so than did Circle Mirror Transformation, left me in a state of both sadness and elation? What's more, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.
One has to see the ad copy and design on the playbill to see how the title is meant as a double entendre, and how it speaks reams to a turn of events that include the dissolution of a triangled relationship. While it's a play that might seem to be solely for and about movie lovers, it is essentially about consuming obsessions that fill up the lives of life's loners and the lonely. It will certainly resonate with those who can identify with Baker's own acknowledged love of movies as she was growing up. More significantly, it will impact anyone who's been motivated and driven by an obsession, or know someone who does. The four cast members (one is in a very small supporting role) are very fine actors and all appear to be on the same concerted wave length as Baker and Gold.
And speaking of length, a play, of course, is not defined by it, but it can be defined by the lengths to which a playwright goes to indulge a personal objective or mission. The abundant and extended pauses by the characters in this play make characters in any Pinter play by contrast seem as if they are on speed.
One thing that was apparent at the performance I attended was the preponderance of young people, almost all of whom appeared (as I looked around) rapt in their recognition of the precisely distilled interaction between the play's characters, low-paid employees. What was remarkable to witness was the willingness of a generation engaged in speedy if not instant visual and communicative gratification to plunge into Baker's signature world of people who articulate in halting, half-sentences and through the subtlest indications of body language.
We can see that Sam (Matthew Maher) enjoys his seniority. He is almost twice the age of Avery (Aaron Clifton Moten), the twenty-something African-American to whom he is showing the simple cleaning routine that they are to follow between showings and after the last patron has left. Their conversation amid the sweeping of the aisles and the collecting of trash is sparked when Sam realizes that Avery is as obsessed with movie trivia as he is, particularly of the parlor game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," that (without going into detail) is the ultimate test of one's knowledge of movies and the actors in them.
The less-educated Sam's has a wary regard for the brighter Avery, who has revealed he has taken a break from college for personal reasons. He shares with him his hope for a long overdue promotion at the movie house, possibly becoming a projectionist. This job, however, is currently filled by Rose (Louisa Krause), a not unattractive but sloppily attired twenty-something woman who has apparently been avoiding the love-sick Sam's overtures.
Rose's interest in the socially and emotionally remote Avery leads her to test him sexually while they are alone watching a film. Her lack of feelings for the increasingly jealous and resentful Sam reach a breaking point in a rather pathetic confrontation. The complex relationships begin to disintegrate when an on-going box-office scam to make a little extra money is discovered by the management, one in which Sam and Rose had pressured the reluctant Avery to become a party.
Maher is terrific as the pathetic Sam who may have to face a future that will never be as bright as the light from the projection booth. Krause impresses as the dour, emotionally wilted Rose who, nevertheless, makes an aggressive play for Avery with a bit of hip hop-ography. Moten is effective as the passive, introspective, most probably sexually-conflicted Avery. Alex Hanna is fine in two small roles in what is surely Baker's most deliberately demanding play yet. The Flick will undoubtedly appeal to adventurously receptive theater goers. But I suspect that it will flicker most brightly for cinephiles.
The Flick
By Annie Baker Directed by Sam Gold
Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street
(212) 279 - 4200
Tickets: $70.00
Performances: Tuesday & Wednesday, 7PM, Thursday & Friday, 8PM, Saturday, 2:30PM & 8PM, Sunday, 2:30PM & 7:30PM
From 02/15/13 Opened 03/12/13 Ends 03/31/13
Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 09/09/13
Baker, whose other plays have also been lauded for their informally structured, protracted naturalistic style, may perhaps be demanding a lot, especially from one segment of the audience, with her new and exceedingly long and yet ultimately remarkable new play in which movie games replace theater games. The Flick has been afforded a cleverly designed (by David Zinn) production at Playwrights Horizons where the setting for all the action is the interior of a small neighborhood movie house in central Massachusetts. Our perspective of the stage from where the screen would be; in other words, we face the raked rows of seats and the back wall of the theater with a view into the tiny window of the projection booth.
Continuing her association with her director of choice and close collaborator Sam Gold, Baker is fortunate to have found someone who knows how to transfer what could appear as an exercise in excessive self-indulgence into a compelling theatrical experience. Whereas Circle Mirror Transformation took an hour and forty five minutes to complete its purposefully redundant dramatic convolutions, The Flick takes three full hours — or I should say three pause-saturated hours to wend its way to its conclusion. A poignant one! This play, much more so than did Circle Mirror Transformation, left me in a state of both sadness and elation? What's more, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.
One has to see the ad copy and design on the playbill to see how the title is meant as a double entendre, and how it speaks reams to a turn of events that include the dissolution of a triangled relationship. While it's a play that might seem to be solely for and about movie lovers, it is essentially about consuming obsessions that fill up the lives of life's loners and the lonely. It will certainly resonate with those who can identify with Baker's own acknowledged love of movies as she was growing up. More significantly, it will impact anyone who's been motivated and driven by an obsession, or know someone who does. The four cast members (one is in a very small supporting role) are very fine actors and all appear to be on the same concerted wave length as Baker and Gold.
And speaking of length, a play, of course, is not defined by it, but it can be defined by the lengths to which a playwright goes to indulge a personal objective or mission. The abundant and extended pauses by the characters in this play make characters in any Pinter play by contrast seem as if they are on speed.
One thing that was apparent at the performance I attended was the preponderance of young people, almost all of whom appeared (as I looked around) rapt in their recognition of the precisely distilled interaction between the play's characters, low-paid employees. What was remarkable to witness was the willingness of a generation engaged in speedy if not instant visual and communicative gratification to plunge into Baker's signature world of people who articulate in halting, half-sentences and through the subtlest indications of body language.
We can see that Sam (Matthew Maher) enjoys his seniority. He is almost twice the age of Avery (Aaron Clifton Moten), the twenty-something African-American to whom he is showing the simple cleaning routine that they are to follow between showings and after the last patron has left. Their conversation amid the sweeping of the aisles and the collecting of trash is sparked when Sam realizes that Avery is as obsessed with movie trivia as he is, particularly of the parlor game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," that (without going into detail) is the ultimate test of one's knowledge of movies and the actors in them.
The less-educated Sam's has a wary regard for the brighter Avery, who has revealed he has taken a break from college for personal reasons. He shares with him his hope for a long overdue promotion at the movie house, possibly becoming a projectionist. This job, however, is currently filled by Rose (Louisa Krause), a not unattractive but sloppily attired twenty-something woman who has apparently been avoiding the love-sick Sam's overtures.
Rose's interest in the socially and emotionally remote Avery leads her to test him sexually while they are alone watching a film. Her lack of feelings for the increasingly jealous and resentful Sam reach a breaking point in a rather pathetic confrontation. The complex relationships begin to disintegrate when an on-going box-office scam to make a little extra money is discovered by the management, one in which Sam and Rose had pressured the reluctant Avery to become a party.
Maher is terrific as the pathetic Sam who may have to face a future that will never be as bright as the light from the projection booth. Krause impresses as the dour, emotionally wilted Rose who, nevertheless, makes an aggressive play for Avery with a bit of hip hop-ography. Moten is effective as the passive, introspective, most probably sexually-conflicted Avery. Alex Hanna is fine in two small roles in what is surely Baker's most deliberately demanding play yet. The Flick will undoubtedly appeal to adventurously receptive theater goers. But I suspect that it will flicker most brightly for cinephiles.
The Flick
By Annie Baker Directed by Sam Gold
Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street
(212) 279 - 4200
Tickets: $70.00
Performances: Tuesday & Wednesday, 7PM, Thursday & Friday, 8PM, Saturday, 2:30PM & 8PM, Sunday, 2:30PM & 7:30PM
From 02/15/13 Opened 03/12/13 Ends 03/31/13
Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 09/09/13
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)