Monday, August 25, 2014

"Poor Behavior" at Primary Stages at the Duke on 42nd Street, 229 West 42nd Street (through September 14, 2014)


Poor Behavi0r
Katie Kreisler and Brian Avers (photo: James Leynse)


In a recent interview with the Huffington Post, playwright Theresa Rebeck said that her play Poor Behavior was inspired by a "really disastrous week" that she and her husband spent with friends at their country home. She certainly isn't the first or will she be the last playwright to use autobiographical memory to expand into a fictional plot. Like the havoc-filled weekend that Noel Coward acknowledged as his inspiration for Hay Fever, Rebeck has taken the potential for increasing unpleasantness and the possibility of disaster among two couples/long-time friends to its limits in her verbose but witty and darkly funny Poor Behavior.

The play's avalanche of words extends well beyond the opening's protracted philosophical argument about "goodness" that quickly tests our investment in two of the play's four characters. If it's hard not to feel that Rebeck's characters are suspiciously close to being metaphorical ciphers, we can credit her for making sure that their actions and their anxieties are as engaging as they are designated to be unsettling. To read the entire review please go to http://curtainup.com/poorbehaviorny14.html

The Alchemist at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey through August 24, 2014

The Alchemist
Jon Barker and Bruce Cromer (photo: Jerry Dalia)


There has to be some reason why Ben Jonson's bawdy 17th century satire has escaped me either reading it or seeing it produced in the Metropolitan area in my memory. Therefore the production now at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey is a long-awaited and overdue treat, one that is sure to delight receptive audiences eager to discover a rare treasure.

Lack of familiarity with this acknowledged classic should actually enhance your pleasure, as it did mine. The important thing to know is that you will laugh long and hard at this riotous staging and the terrific, over-the-top performances under the direction of Bonnie J. Monte.

Monte's very useful and also delightful "director's notes" give us good reasons on how and why she has overcome her "40-year spanning disdain" for this play about, you guessed it, an alchemist. To that point, it is about a pair of 17th century con-artists who are revealed and exposed as not so far removed in their ethics and morals from their 21st century counterparts. It is our good fortune that Monte was eventually seduced by the text, which she has commendably adapted and edited down to under three hours from its original four. To read the rest of the review please go to http://www.curtainup.com/alchemistnj14.html

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

"King Lear" at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park through August 17, 2014


Chukwudi Iwuji and Clarke Peters


Chukwudi Iwuji and Clarke Peters (photo: Joan Marcus)

If we acknowledge that the world we currently live in is a colossal mess with more countries than not in utter chaos and controlled by leaders losing their grip, we can see how "King Lear" resonates for our time and perhaps all time. So this is probably exactly the right time for Shakespeare's mad and maddening king to come back full circle at the Public Theater's Free Shakespeare in the Park where it was selected to be the very first free production in the park in 1962. It was staged only one more time in1973 before the production that is now being presented through August 17.

There probably also isn't a classically trained actor worth his sea-salt who, upon achieving a certain demented age and degree of confidence who doesn't aspire to play the title character. How lucky am I to have had the privilege of seeing some mighty fine Lears over the years, including Sam Waterston and Kevin Kline at the Public, Frank Langella and Ian McKellen at BAM Harvey Theater. I was also impressed by the Lears played by Harris Yulin and Daniel Davis at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey.

Dramatically exposed madness not only makes for good theater but also makes analysts of its observers. Objectified madness reigns in art. The diva who conquers the operatically expressed madness of Lucia di Lammermoor; the prima ballerina who envelopes the danced madness of Giselle may, indeed, enable a gifted performing artist to use that character's madness as a propellant. But it remains (my belief) for the actor, with his spoken words, to bring the abysmal darkness and impenetrable and mysterious depths of the mind to us in the most accessible terms.

It is with the spoken words that I can say that John Lithgow is one of the most eloquently persuasive and emotionally accessible of Lears I have seen. Scaling and conquering the heights is no obstacle for the Tony Award-winning Lithgow whose performances in the classical repertory have been as consistently lauded as those in contemporary plays such as his most recent "The Columnist." Although he gives by necessity a performance framed in turn by arrogance, humiliation, rage, and finally despair amid senile foolishness, he engages us with the sheer force of his dramatic dexterity.

The many dimensions of reality and insanity seem hardly a breath away from Lithgow's awareness and whose body seems burdened, if not harassed by his seedy garments. He also sustains his heartbreak, as he carries (a feat not always attempted) Cordelia's dead body on stage.
 A big man distinguished by his impressive white hair and beard, Lithgow's ability to hold us within the aura of Lear's rapid disintegration is essential and he does it handily. Unfortunately, other key actors - Annette Bening, Jessica Hecht and Jessica Collins - who are playing the important roles of Lear's three daughters, appear more as disorienting distractions.

 For some reason, under the direction of the otherwise terrific Daniel Sullivan, all three seem to exist on stage only by right of their oddly individualized and notably idiosyncratic attitudes. Although no stranger to the stage among
many fine performances in film, Bening offers a strangely remote and only vaguely credible delivery of the text as the she-devil Goneril.  She is, however, no more misguided than is Hecht's certainly mischievous Regan whose special gift for giving her lines a comical edge doesn't always work in this case. Collins, presumably the one for whom we have the most empathy is almost a non-presence as the uncomplicated Cordelia.

There is no denying that filial ingratitude plays a large part in "King Lear," but as produced by the Public Theater, the time we spend wondering just what the miscast Bening, Hecht and Collins are experiencing here is unsettling. Notwithstanding the cheesy and laughable sound effects created for the famous storm scene, set designer John Lee Beatty has given the company a slightly raised platform and a large grey wall with portals to suggest with a minimal stretch of imagination pre-Christian Britain.

One has to be in awe of the way the play masterfully blends two plot-lines. The themes of old age and the different relationships of each child to his/her parent, in both the main and sub-plots, brings universal timelessness to each new generation of viewers. Briefly, the story details King Lear's misapprehension of his one daughter's devotion causing him to divide his kingdom between the remaining two daughters, who have feigned their love. The resulting web of deception by the wicked daughters to strip their father of all power, and at the same time involve and seduce Edmund, the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester (who has the similar function in the sub-plot of deceiving his father by denouncing his brother Edgar as a traitor), results in a downward spiral of devastating proportions. The majestic sweep of the poetry is hardly surpassed in all of Shakespeare.

Many of the supporting players are, however, quite good  in what is generally an unfocused staging. Chukwudi Iwuji, as Edgar, gains our empathy not only for having to withstand having his dirt smeared body protected by a loin cloth, but also for the impassioned delivery of his lines. Eric Sheffer Stevens is convincing as his conniving false brother Edmund.  Jay O Sanders gives another one of  his outstandingly sturdy performances as the Earl of Kent and Steven Boyer handily addresses the impish doings and wise discourse of Lear's faithful fool. The Earl of Gloucester gets a fine interpreter in Clarke Peters. But it remains for Lithgow to remind us that "King Lear" is Shakespeare at his peak.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

"Sex With Strangers" at the Second Stage Theatre through August 24, 2014



Sex With StrangersBilly Magnussen and Anna Gunn (photo: Joan Marcus)


First produced by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre in 2011, Laura Eason's long overdue romantic comedy has arrived at the Second Stage Theatre. This ultra contemporary two-character study in sex and success is smart and savvy. Although there are a preponderance of provocative, graphically-depicted scenes of intimacy that might make some feel like voyeurs, this play is otherwise not so far removed from the dozens of titillating, insinuating, and playfully romantic comedies that filled Broadway houses during the mid 20th century. As it is all about sex, seduction, deception and role-playing in the burgeoning age of the Internet, iphone, and ipad I suspect it will probably be seen just as dated to the next generation as the afore-mentioned comedies. And that's fine. To read my entire review please go to  http://curtainup.com/sexwithstrangers14.html