"King Richard III" and "Twelfth Night" at the Belasco Theatre

  

Mark Rylance as Olivia and as Richard

It is hard not to gush over these two productions sent to us courtesy of London’s Globe Theatre as they are as nothing like any other Shakespeare you have probably seen before, unless you were lucky enough to see these in London. To begin with there is the opportunity to see Mark Rylance as King Richard III and also as Olivia in “Twelfth Night,” as he leads an all-male company (as was the custom during Shakespeare’s time) through these stunningly designed (by Jenny Tiramani) productions that are close to being as authentic and commemorative in style and staging as originally presented, even with having some of the audience watch the play in tiered seating on the stage.

That we have the privilege to share the excitement and the thrill of seeing Rylance capture the devious Richard’s deviously duplicitous nature as well as to see him embrace the graciously aloof femininity of the initially shrouded Countess Olivia is a treat that won’t come around again anytime soon. As extravagantly lighted by candles as well as by a giant candled chandelier, the action of both plays may have you initially startled and/or amused by the obligatory male-playing-female conceit. But your attention will soon be focused simply on the grace and greatness of the performances by Rylance and the entire company.

I doubt if you have ever heard Shakespeare’s prose and poetry spoken as clearly or as comprehensibly. But more importantly, the roles, even the minor ones, are vibrantly acted. Certainly much of the credit for the success of these productions goes deservedly to director Tim Carroll whose reverence for these plays are as evident as is efforts to deepen what we have previously seen or thought we knew about both of these classics.

I was especially thrilled even before the plays began to share in the experience of the actors pre-performance preparations. These include (and please come early) watching the actors helped by the dressers and each other to get into their opulent costumes, also noticing how intently and expertly they warm up like athletes and also go over the required posturing, posing. Most impressive of all is how the men practice the walk of women.

How marvelous that the gloriously baroque Belasco Theater is home to these productions and where it is easy to get into the intimate ambiance that best suits these plays. It is the detail in the performances, however, that is also a marvel. Wearing a billowing, floor-length black silk gown, Rylance appears to either glide or flit across the stage as if he were a member of the Ice Capades. His interpretation of the at-first standoffish soon to be impassioned Olivia has a funnily romantic edge that is a wonderful contrast to his role as the physically and mentally twisted Richard empowering the venomous words that the Bard entrusted to him with undoubtedly more demonic daring than you have ever heard.

I cannot find praise enough for each and every member of the supporting company, whether in women’s garb or not, but Samuel Barnett is a stand-out playing the conflicted Viola in “Twelfth Night” and the also in emotional turmoil Queen Elizabeth in “Richard.” Oh my, beg, borrow or stand (if all else fails), but don’t miss this golden opportunity to see the full company of Shakespeare’s Globe players end the performance doing their famous “jig,” a highlight that will have you doing a jig of your own in your seat.

“Twelfth Night” and “King Richard III”

Belasco Theatre, 111 West 44^th Street

For tickets ($27.00 - $137.00) go to www.shakespearebroadway.com 

"Murder for Two" at the New World Stages

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Brett Ryback and Jeff Blumenkrantz
(photo credit: Joan Marcus)

“Murder for Two” at the New World Stages

Although only two talented performers occupy the stage for ninety minutes, there is a roomful of neurotic murder suspects (all played by Jeff Blumenkrantz) and one very nervous detective (played by Brett Ryback) in this musical murder-mystery farce. For all of the clownish shenanigans that are dispersed amidst some comical digressions at the piano, my patience was tried waiting for things to get resolved.  

More wearisome than winning, “Murder for Two” is a collaborative effort by Kellen Blair (book and lyrics) and Joe Kinosian (book and music) that is at its best when it is musical and at its worst when it attends to the frenetic antics prescribed by the book and by director Scott Schwartz.

The thorny thicket of a plot involves the attempt of a novice detective to figure out who murdered the great American novelist who lies stiffly among his guests on the living room floor of his stately home. Amid the redundant questioning of the usual suspects of both genders there is relief and it comes with the razzmatazz of the songs mainly attended to by Ryback. The tall and lanky Blumenkrantz plays the various male and female suspects, each of whom are dependent upon his ability to change his voice, twist the contours of his face with nary a change of costume.

Granted that Blumenkrantz’s lickety-split transformations are to be admired and they occasionally deserve a laugh, they grow as tiresome as the plot . . . which goes on about twenty minutes longer than it should. Let’s hope that “Murder for Two,” which has moved downtown for an open-ended run following its initial abbreviated engagement last summer at the Second Stage Uptown, finds an audience more receptive to its fun than was I.

“Murder for Two”

New World Stages, 340 West 50^th Street

For tickets $47.00 - $77.00 call (212) 239 - 6200

"Becoming Dr. Ruth" at the Westside Theatre/Upstairs

Debra Jo Rupp as Dr. Ruth
(photo credit: Carol Rosegg)

Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, a petite, intellectually robust and personally disarming educator about all things sexual is having a revelatory tell-all at the Westside Theatre/Upstairs. . . that is as portrayed to European-accented perfection by Debra Jo Rupp who originated the role this past summer at the Barrington Stage in the Berkshires. It is a treat for New Yorkers and others to see how ingratiatingly Rupp personifies this courageous and provocative woman in this wonderful solo-play by Mark St. Germain (“Freud’s Last Session”).

Although an understudy (Anne O’Sullivan) is noted in the program, it is impossible for me to think that anyone could be as captivating as Rupp as she shares the now 85 year-old Dr. Ruth’s story that begins with as a child survivor of the Holocaust. There is never a dull moment in this autobiographically-structured play in which we are immersed in Dr. Ruth’s personal journey from sorrows to successes from the first word to the last. The real Dr. Ruth will, indeed, have the last word for those who attend Wednesday evening performances on November 6, 13, 20 and December 18) when she will discuss the play as well as answer questions from the audience.   

“Becoming Dr. Ruth” is an inspiring example of a one’s woman’s ability, in the face of many challenges and obstacles, to embrace love and marriage(s) and family, satisfy her thirst for knowledge and education, and to carve out a remarkable and illustrious career as an authority on sex. Her many books on the subject and her popular radio shows about sex have made her a star. But it only as we share her personal exploits and experiences in this poignantly enlivening play do we know what a treasure we have in our midst.

Lectures can be boring, but Rush creates such a lively personality (not that she didn’t have the real role model to copy) that we are easily seduced. The plays opens with Dr. Ruth busy packing up her belongings as she is getting ready to move from her Washington Heights apartment (excellent setting by Brian Prather) to another one in New York City, she welcomes us as guests. Not in the least distracted by our presence, which she graciously acknowledges (“I’m so glad you are here.”), she uses her collections of journals, photos and books to spark her memory interrupted on occasion by the obligatory phone call from her concerned children.

Humor abounds in the text that St. Germain has written to offer balance to some of the sadness that also accompanies the images from her past, particularly those of her parents, her father being a victim of the purge of Jews during the infamous Kristalnacht. Unsurprisingly, romance is never an afterthought but a dominant thread throughout her life and it is beautifully carved, as are also evocative projections, into her narrative. The play has been directed by Julianne Boyd with cleverness and care with attention to detail, particularly Dr. Ruth’s easy and natural transitions into someone with an instinct to entertain as well as to inform.

Although we do get to hear some of her snappy and smart advice on sex to callers, it is the combination of a stirring story and the stunning performance that makes “Becoming Dr. Ruth” a must-see. Perhaps if Dr. Ruth were to say and I would concur that “a good play is like an orgasm,” that is all the encouragement that you need to see “Becoming Dr. Ruth”

“Becoming Dr. Ruth” (through January 12, 2014)

Westside Theatre/Upstairs, 407 W. 43^rd Street

For tickets ($79.00) call (212) 239 - 6200

"Disaster" at St. Luke's Theater

Tom Riis Farrell and Mary Testa
(photo credit: Jeremy Daniel)

Please know that the above title of this new musical is not a critique, but if it was it would be “Delirious.” “Disaster” is, however, a feverishly daffy musical parody of the disaster movie genre that proved immensely popular during the 1970s. It came as a surprise and will remain one of the season’s delights. If “Disaster” has unwittingly left out (unless it is an invasion from Mars) even one single horrifyingly calamitous event known to mankind, I cannot think of it. What disasters have been included to enhance its wonderfully inane story is enough.

Seth Rudetsky and Jack Plotnick are the co-authors. Plotnick has also directed to a fare-thee-well what is essentially a non-stop barrage of tragi-comical incidents all of which are strung together with popular songs from the Disco-intense 1970s, many of which are uncannily complimentary to the action. No need to detail the plot, as it would spoil the fun.

 

But where would this loony lark be without a terrific cast playing an endearingly diverse collection of characters who find themselves struggling to stay alive as all hell and more breaks loose on an ill-fated, floating gambling casino in New York harbor? Here’s just a hint. Can an unscrupulous entrepreneur get away with ignoring safety codes while  former lovers are reunited perhaps for the last time? Can a Nun once addicted to gambling resist the pull of her past and the one-arm bandit all the while a dotty diva tries to revitalize her past while carting around her precocious twin children? And can a desperate woman keep her husband from finding out that she is dying before her escalating symptoms (too outrageous to mention) give her away? Oh, there are more victims and/or survivors among a surprisingly large cast for a small-scaled musical.

But more importantly, how many will remain alive to celebrate in an ingeniously funny rescue-by-helicopter finale, an eat-your-heart-out “Miss Saigon” moment. If the slapdash floors and ceilings, cheesy walls and whatnots that set designer Josh Iacovelli has created are not meant to survive, they are as funny to observe while they remain in one piece as are the actors who careen through them. The wonder of this show is that despite the characters being stereotypical archetypes they all have dimensions that make us root for them.

Outstanding among the over-all splendid cast is the good-looking, romantic leading man with a great voice Matt Farcher, the hilarious Jennifer Simard as the obsessive/compulsive Nun, the incredibly versatile Jonah Verdon as both brother and sister, and a sublimely funny Mary Testa as the valiant wife with “issues.” Some cleverly operated puppets deserve kudos as do various body parts that appear and disappear with aplomb. I don’t have the song list but the score is comprised of classics that will undoubtedly bring smiles of recognition to your face as will this company of superlative musical farceurs. What a delightful disaster this turned out to be.

“Disaster”

St. Luke's Theatre, 308 W. 46th Street

For tickets ($39.50 - $69.50) call 212/239-6200
$39.50-$69.50

"After Midnight" at the Brooks Atkinson Theater

 











It should come as no surprise that the enthusiastically received revue Cotton Club Parade, as originally conceived by City Center's Encores! and Jazz at Lincoln Center, would find its way to Broadway. The success of the 2011 production and its follow-up edition in 2012 has evolved into a slightly more enhanced production re-named After Midnight. For the complete review posted on CurtainUp.com please use link:  http://curtainup.com/aftermidnight13.html

“Juno and the Paycock” at the Irish Repertory Theatre through December 8, 2013

 J. Smith-Cameron

What Sean O’Casey’s political tragicomedy “Juno and the Paycock” lacks in plot, it makes up for in characterization. And in the splendid production directed by Charlotte Moore for the Irish Repertory Theatre, characterization gets its due. O’Casey (“Shadow of a Gunman,” and “The Plow and the Stars”) wrote this riveting ferociously subversive play in 1924 eight years after the Easter Rising of 1916, and only two years after the terrible Civil War. He labeled it rightly “a tragedy.” That may be true enough, but the bracing lyrical humor of its lowly Irish folk is expressed on such a high and impressively theatrical plane that it serves to empower rather than to defuse their disconsolate lives and the tragedies that befall them

The story of a chaotic family that misguidedly lives on credit in the false belief they have come into an inheritance is a doozy. In this production, there is no lack of the full flavor of the Irishness that so richly pervades and energizes all the productions given by this theatre company. Given designer James Noone’s dingy setting, David Towser’s dowdy costumes, and Brian Nason’s dreary lighting) the actors, both principals and peripheral players, admirably mine O’Casey’s poetic text poetry even in the midst of the play’s abject realism. J. Smith Cameron’s tough-love performance as the razor-sharp wife and mother of an impoverished Dublin family is riveting. Cameron, a superb actor who has been receiving acclaim for the past couple of seasons acting in Richard Nelson’s series of “Apple Family” plays at the Public Theatre, is making her Irish Repertory Theatre debut. She has winningly framed Juno’s passionately Catholic instincts with the stirring and heroic sobriety of her pagan goddess namesake.

Ciaran O’Reilly is wonderfully blustery as the ale-bloated, blarney-spouting Captain Jack Boyle, the “Paycock,” who, citing the questionable pains in his legs as an excuse refuses to look for work even when it falls into his lap. As Joxer Daly, the Captain’s drinking partner, John Keating doesn’t hide behind the duplicity of fragile relationships, as he polishes off more than poetic quotations and half-remembered songs. Ed Malone gives a poignant portrayal of the wounded son Johnny, who suffers from nightmares and hallucinations, but who has more to worry about when his allegiance to the Irish Republican Brotherhood is questioned. Mary Mallen affixes a sincere countenance and a plaintive courage to the role of the Mary, the family’s main provider and a member of the currently striking union.

Spurning her ardent wooer Jerry Devine (sensitively acted by David O’Hara), Mary is seduced and abandoned by Charlie Bentham, a school-teacher and lawyer (slickly played by James Russell), who brings the news of Jack’s inheritance, and without warning leaves town when the windfall falls through.

The play has its melodramatic digressions, such as the extended scene in which the mourning Mrs. Tancred, as wrenchingly played by Fiana Toibin, details the murder of her activist son to the Boyle family while on the way to the funeral. The somber tone is well timed to put a damper on an impromptu songfest in which the Boyle’s and their obstreperous neighbor Maisie Madigan (Terry Donnelly) display their vocal virtuosity. But it remains for the virtuosity of O’Casey’s writing to take us from boisterous comedy to dispiriting situations to tragic results, and yet leave us with a sense of the heroic. This is in the person of Juno, who, unlike her loafer-of-a-husband, who sees “the whole world in a state o chassis!” (a corruption of the word chaos), is indomitable and a survivor.

“Juno and the Paycock” (through December 8, 2013

132 W. 22^nd Street

For tickets ($55.00 - $65.00) call 212-727-2737

“Good Person of Szechwan” at the Public Theater (through November 24)

 

 Lisa Kron and Taylor Mac Photo credit: Carol Rosegg.a
(Photo credit: )

Finding a good person in Szechwan Province proves problematic for the three representatives of heaven’s hierarchy in Bertolt Brecht’s 1943 political allegory. But as far as I can see, there are no problems with the Foundry Theatre’s acclaimed production (previously at LaMama) that created a joyous and touching experience out of a play that could appear as both too politically didactic and philosophically remote for modern audiences. There is, however, so much audaciously conceived invention in this production with an original and wonderful country-styled score by Cesar Alvarez and as performed by pop-rock group The Lisps and the company that it seems like a totally new play, with no apologies to Brecht needed.

The first bow goes to Foundry’s director Lear DeBessonet who has adhered to the Brechtian message but has re-possessed it as a fantastical almost fairy-tale-told metaphor that delights that eye with cartoon-like razzle-dazzle and tickles the ear with its newly informed text. Although the production is not lavish by today’s standards, it has been designed by artists who know how to have fun with flair. That flair is captured by a company that could not be better at giving a new glow and inference to John Willet’s translation.

Among the sublime cast, there are two really great performances at the play’s center. Taylor Mac is magnificent in drag in the title role of the prostitute Shen Tei who has found a way to survive the poverty of the slums in which she lives. Far from hardened by her lot, Shen Tei is a terminal softy who, however, learns the hard-way that others don’t all share her values. The other great performance is by David Warner as Wang, the Waterseller, who serves as the play’s exuberantly clownish narrator and as guide for the three white-clad Gods, as played with a delightfully dismissive air by Vinie Burrows, Mia Katigbak and Mary Shultz.

Performed within a series of colorfully whimsical miniatures brilliantly designed by Matt Saunders, the story follows the efforts of Shen Tei to have a better life after she has been blessed by The Gods for giving them shelter after being turned away by everyone else in town. The Gods give Shen Tei enough money to open a tobacco shop that unfortunately becomes the target for some of the most unsavory and needy residents in town, all of whom conspire to manipulate Shen Tei.

Her survival techniques come into play as she assumes another identity in order to out-wit those whose intentions are not admirable and certainly not good. Better than good is Lisa Kron (yes, the same Kron who wrote the book for the musical “Fun Home” also playing at the Public) in multiple comical roles. But when it comes to changing personalities, this show belongs to Mac, whose impassioned acting is as terrific as his singing. But who would have thought that Brecht would be the voice behind the most exhilarating, laughter and tears-inducing musical of the season?

“Good Person of Szechwan” (through November 24, 2013)

Martinson Hall at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street.

For tickets call 212) 967-7555

“Fun Home” at the Public Theatre (through December 1, 2013)

 

 Sydney Lucas and Michael Cerveris (Photo credit: Joan Marcus)

 There is more excitement, fun, as well as an unprecedented convergence of terrific entertainment at Public Theatre than has been seen there in a while. This is not meant to imply that the previous productions in previous seasons  have not been worthy but only that right now you can’t go wrong with what you pick to see (how about all?) in the various theatres, including the premiere of Wally Shawn’s “Grasses of a Thousand Colors” and Richard Nelson’s “Apple Family Plays.”

If I sound like a press agent, it is because my enthusiasm for what I have recently seen is at a peak. Composer Jeanine Tesori in collaboration with book writer and lyricist Lisa Kron have given a stunning musical and dramatic edge to Alison Bechdel’s already famously edgy autobiographical graphic novel about a young woman growing up among siblings, one older boy, one younger boy, in the home of parents who owned and operated a funeral parlor in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania. The “fun home” is not only the funeral parlor where the children often played hide and seek among the caskets, but rather the large Victorian home where they live and that has received countless makeovers and filled and re-filled with period collectables and furnishings.

Fun as it was for the children at play, there was also plenty of anxiety and stress as was psychological conflict formulating around them and would rise to the surface in the maturing Alison (as played brilliantly by three actors at three different stages in her life: Beth Malone, Alexandra Socha, Sydney Lucas) who would gradually come to terms with her being a Lesbian.

Alison’s feelings about her own sexual nature are sublimated within the family as are those of her gay father Bruce (Micharel Cerveris) who keeps his homosexual dalliances a secret from his wife Helen (Judy Kuhn). When not attending to the family business or cruising, Bruce uses his self-imposed authority as a disciplinarian with his children to keep order in their lives. In doing so, he has also created a deepening schism between himself and Helen. Helen realizes perhaps too late that she has wasted her life with a conflicted man who did not really love her.

Tesori, who wrote the wonderful music for “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” and “Caroline, or Change” has written an even more sublimely eclectic, melodic and dynamic score. And Kron’s funny, touching and inventive lyrics and text allow the three Alison’s to weave their personal “captions-added” narratives fluidly and often funnily in and out of the action. It is easy to become transfixed right from the start by the primary reflections of the oldest Alison, who represents the adult Bechdel. The past, present and future are clearly embraced as they are extrapolated, under Sam Gold’s sterling direction, from the oldest Alison’s memoirs. It is impossible to not become engaged in what was happening within David Zinn’s almost magically maneuvered settings.

Despite the prominence of the three beautifully defined performances by the three Alison’s (impossible to decide which is the best) Cerveris creates his own imposing universe of a man possessed by a drive that he cannot restrain despite the hurt it brings to Helen, who is played with heart-breaking poignancy by Kuhn. Light family moments are balanced with darker ones. But there is one fantasy song and dance number that is a knockout. Best of all there is that rare depth and perception of the characters that is so rare in musicals.

“Fun Home”

Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street

For tickets call (212) 967 – 7555

“Betrayal” at the Ethel Barrymore Theater (through January 5, 2014)

Rafe Spall and Daniel Craig

(photo credit: Brigitte Lacombe)

What a bummer that the mutual sexual dalliances in “Betrayal” don’t seem as important, as icily fun, or simply as seductive as they did way back in 1980. Although it is occasionally produced, Harold Pinter’s play of interlocking affairs has been afforded some unusual attention in this revival with its chief selling point being move star Daniel Craig playing opposite his movie star wife Rachel Weisz.

At the Ethel Barrymore Theatre under the direction of renowned director Mike Nichols, all of Pinter’s wonderfully worn-out and wearisome emotional, intellectual, and conjugal betrayals, as practiced by a quartet (one unseen)of rather superficial lovers, have been duly inferred and laid out, from end to start (to use the play’s conceit).

However, it is precisely the grim banality of the long, dull affair (although this production barely survives its ninety minutes) between the play’s principal lovers Jerry and Emma that should provoke what we seem to like best about Pinter. Oddly, it doesn’t under Nichol’s detrimentally incremented directives, mainly because sex has replaced sensuality and gratuitous action has replaced closeted inference. As the story devolves in two steps backward and one-step forward flashback scenes, the mostly understated affair begins in a London pub.

Here, in the first of set designer Ian Macneil’s precisely evocative  interiors, we learn that Emma, an art-gallery owner who has not been Jerry’s lover for the past two years, is currently having an affair with a writer named Casey.

From this retrospective point, the play sets out its sequence of scenes backward to the point where an inebriated Jerry first makes a pass at Emma, his best friends’ wife, in her bedroom, during a party. Don’t quibble that neither the characters nor the situations in “Betrayal” appear to warrant the sort of introspection that Pinter affords them. For Pinter aficionados, the play offers his typical gift of minimalist phrases in a text that can be expected to ripple with rhythmic cadences. Credit, if you can call it that, goes to director Nichols for minimizing that familiar affectation.

The current cast has no difficulty with the lilt and punctuation that are the considered essence of a fully-realized Pinter play as they don’t really exist here. Weisz as Emma, Rafe Spall (who, in making his Broadway debut, and the best thing about this production) as Jerry, and Craig as Robert certainly turn words that could sound mechanical into words that sound natural, which is not meant as a compliment. With the glibness, they impart, there comes surrender to humor that may not be in the play’s best interest. It’s nice to see the good-looking Craig, famously known for his film role as James Bond, tackle a difficult role, but as interpreted is as interesting to watch as would be a department store mannequin.

“Betrayal”

Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47^th Street

For tickets ($57.00 - $152.00) call (212) 239 - 6200

“Marie Antoinette” at SoHo Rep. (through November 24, 2013)

 

Marin Ireland (photo credit: Pavel Antonov

Sometimes bare-bones minimalism works beautifully as it does with director Rebecca Taichman’s scaled-down (from previous productions) version by the SoHo Rep. of David Adjmi’s “Marie Antoinette.” Despite its lack of trappings, it is a remarkably vivid, if surreal, consideration of an infamous life filled but also blinded by excess. The action is played out in front of an elongated white wall with virtually no indication of the opulence and extravagance that would normally befit a play about the notoriously shallow and clueless Queen of France.

But there is nothing shallow about Marin Ireland’s vibrantly neurotic performance as the doomed Marie, or the subtly clever and witty text that embroiders her frivolous life up to her fateful death. A tour-de-force performance by any standard, Ireland spews a constant stream of outrageous bon mots, including the “let them eat cake,” as well as some stunning history-based commentary on life at court but all given, sometimes screeched, with a decidedly 21^st century kick.

Her one and only gown looks like petals of a huge red rose and her one ultra bouffant wig say are an impressive wry enough commentary on her personality and the haute couture of the day as does the Lilliputian stature of her husband King Louis XVI, as played with comical fits of inertia by Steven Rattazi, a feckless ruler who knows he can’t satisfy his wife’s apparently conflicted sexual appetite or his own for that matter. No need for scene changes as people of the court and others including a wise and wooly lamb (David Greenspan) who (quite a nice puppet) engages Marie in conversation. Also engaging is Axel Fersen (Chris Stack), a handsome courtier who admires Marie but would like to be of more service to her.

With the help of some rather pathetic projections, Marie’s curtailed life spirals downward as the Revolution gains power and she and her family lose power. The play begins to plod slightly from the point when she is captured by remorseless activists to her tragic end. But up to that point, our fascination is remains focused on Marie within the context of a surreal tableau that may have been minimized but not misguided.

“Marie Antoinette”

SoHo Rep. 46 Walker Street.

For tickets ($20.00 - $55.00) call (212) 352-3101

“Romeo and Juliet” at the Classic Stage Company (through November 3, 2013)

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Julian Cihi as Romeo and Elizabeth Olsen as Juliet.(Photo credit: Joan Marcus)

As if one revisionist production of “Romeo and Juliet” wasn’t enough, we get the dubious pleasure of two, which of course invites comparisons. Given that the Broadway version, under the direction of David Leveaux is sprinkled with a little star dust with film actor Orlando Bloom as Romeo and produced on a budget that allows for some awesome scenery and lighting, the CSC production, under the direction of  Tea Alagic, is minimalist in virtually every respect.

Regrettably, the youthful and attractive Julian Cihi and Elizabeth Olsen in the titular roles are awkwardly sincere as are many young students in acting Shakespeare. But they are also essentially unimpressive as the ill-fated lovers. But they are only a part of a problematic ill-conceived production that invites the normally fine actor as Daphne Rubin-Vega to jazz up the role of the Nurse with a heavy Spanish accent (mostly unintelligible). She parades and postures in a sassy get-up and platform shoes as in a farce or parody.

Although Kathryn Meisle as Lady Capulet is more flashily dressed (everyone else in the company favors basic black) and infers she may have a part-time job selling cosmetics (or something else) in a department store, she at least offers a provocative interpretation of Juliet’s mother. Her broadly insinuating performance suggests she is having more sex in Verona than those two teens in heat.

In contrast to Daniel Davis, who carries high-minded affectation to excess as Friar Lawrence, T.R. Knight over-plays Mercutio as if he were simply high on speed. Director Alagic has the lovers perform the famous balcony scene on the floor, an idea that has some merit considering that there is no indication in this staging of time, place, purpose or mission.

“Romeo and Juliet”

Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13^th Street

For tickets ($60.00) call (212) 352-3101

“Romeo and Juliet” at the Richard Rodgers Theater (through November 24, 2013)

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Orlando Blum and Condola Rashad

Famed musical comedy author/lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green once satirically reminded us in their 1958 musical comedy Bells are Ringing just how important the phone is in getting a message delivered: "Those kids would be alive today," they wrote. They were, of course, referring to Romeo and Juliet the love sick teenagers who unfortunately did not have access to a phone. A cell phone perhaps a text message gone astray could have served as an amusing gimmick in this otherwise passionately invoked, slickly staged, modern-dress production now on Broadway. For the complete review go to CurtainUp.com http://curtainup.com/romeoandjulietbway13.html