"Aubergine" (began performances August 19, 2016)

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Sue Jean Kim and Tim Kang
(photo credit: Joan Marcus)

Our essential love of food, its sensual and medicinal qualities, our essential connection to death and dying, its sensorial and spiritual qualities play an important part in “Aubergine” with its titled homage to egg plant. The gifted Julia Cho’s play may be overwritten and overindulgent and with more climaxes and codas than a Beethoven symphony, but it is a haunting exploration of how a son copes with the process of dying as it applies to his estranged father. Not necessarily depressing but decidedly sad and remorseful in tone, “Aubergine” follows the course of care and its residual emotional toll on Ray (Tim Kang) a suddenly disengaged but accomplished chef.

Ray has taken upon himself to tend for his comatose father (Stephen Park) during his final days. A helping emotional hand comes from Ray’s devoted girlfriend Cornelia (Sue Jean Kim) whose support also includes acting as interpreter/translator between Ray and the father’s long-estranged brother (Joseph Steven Yang) who has arrived from Korea upon hearing the news.

Another character named Diane (Jessica Love, who also doubles as a hospital worker) gives a long opening speech on the rapture experienced by epicureans eating exceptionally prepared food, adds an allegorical aspect to the core plot. Food is integral in the care as Ray is coerced into fixing a medicinal soup that requires a particular kind of turtle as a key ingredient. Humor is injected into the play quite naturally as the relationships between the characters grow sharper and deeper, especially as the despondent Ray is made to see a more valued portrait of his father as told in a story by the Uncle.

Kang is excellent as the son whose animosity towards his father slowly grows toward compassion and empathy. Kim offers sparks of savvy and sophistication as the very supportive Cornelia. Yang doesn’t speak English (but we get his words translated by projected super titles) but is, nevertheless, impressive. Perhaps most impressive, however, is Michael Potts who offers wise and practical advice as Lucien, the visiting nurse. Monologues dot the play, even a rather poignant one given by the dying father in a flashback. Derek McLane’s handsome revolving setting includes different locations. It accommodates a play that actually accommodates more of life than of death. A little more turtle soup, anyone?

“Aubergine” (through October 2)

Playwrights Horizons

"Marie and Rosetta" (began performances August 24, 2016)

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Kecia Lewis and Rebecca Naomi Jones

A funeral home in Mississippi doesn’t sound like the ideal sleeping quarters but it works just fine for gospel singer/guitar player Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Kecia Lewis), and her new acquaintance and partner-to-be singer/pianist Marie Knight (Rebecca Naomi Jones.) Finding lodging is always a problem for blacks in the south, but here they intend to not only get a good night’s sleep among the coffins  but do a little rehearsing as well. It’s the rehearsing that is at the heart of George Brant’s play about two real life artists who came together for a brief period of time to combine their talents. Their integration of gospel, rhythm  and blues during the mid 20th century made them popular with church goers and with those in the entertainment world.

Very different in their personalities, but both accomplished artists, the play follows the attempt by the more earthy Rosetta to find a common ground between her night-club style and Marie’s more sedate and restrained/spiritual style as reflected by her time singing with a quartet backing up the great Mahalia Jackson. It was a special treat for me to see Kecia Lewis in this role so soon after seeing her dynamic portrayal of “Mother Courage” for the Classic Stage Company last season. She is terrific as Tharpe whose bigger than life personality and extraordinary talent is brought to vivid life. If Lewis dominates the stage, Jones holds her own with a sensitive portrayal that brings a nice contrast to the give-and-take between the artists. Although Lewis doesn’t play the guitar and Jones doesn’t play the piano, they fake it expertly as Felicia Colins (guitar) and Deah Harriott (piano) do the unseen honors.

Although Brant’s play, under the attentive direction of Neil Pepe, turns on a gimmick and a twist that seems more than a little incredulous if not downright fanciful, it isn’t an issue as it comes late in the 90 minute performance. For the most part, we spend listening to some mighty fine singing amidst some sassy talking.

“Marie and Rosetta” (through October 16)

Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater

"The Birds" (began performances Sept. 9, 2016)

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Tony Naumovski and Antoinette LaVecchia
(photo credit: Carol Rosegg)

If you are as curious as I to see how Conor McPherson’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s short story “The Birds” stacks up against Alfred Hitchcock’s scary and much discussed if also inscrutable film version, then head over to 59E59 where, in their tiniest venue, you are squeezed into a tiny open space to feel the claustrophobia and the dread experienced by the play’s three characters. I must admit that I am not familiar with the short story (written in 1953) but have seen and enjoyed the film (1963) numerous times. The first thing you have to accept is that there is only a very little overlap in story, concept or style between the film and this otherwise cleverly minimalist staging by director Stefan Dzeparoski for his Birdland Theater and first seen at Origin’s 1st Irish Festival 2016.

Three excellent actors are playing just four roles and like the film they are holed up in a tightly boarded house that is under siege from vicious attacking birds of all kinds. Evidently birds are out to get us humans and have gathered their forces all over the world. To be sure it’s that rare species known as science fiction theater, but what has been staged is theatrically compelling, if not always comprehensible. Don’t expect to recognize any of the characters or situations that you remember from the film but simply accept McPherson’s version as curious as any to get your own feathers aflutter.

Taking refuge together are a big hulking bruiser Nat (Tony Naumovski) who suffers from occasional mental seizures and an unnerved novelist Diane (Antoinette LaVecchia) who doesn’t quite trust Tony but worries more about Julie (Mia Hutchinson-Shaw) the strange, sexy and unsettling young woman who seeks shelter and possibly more from Nat.

More intriguing than the erotically charged goings on is the production design by Konstantin Roth (set) David J. Palmer (video) , Ien Denio (sound) that surround the closely compacted audience with disquieting noises and a visual eeriness that helps to contain the mood of this occasionally provocative 90 minute production. The three actors share the same tense world, presumably a farm house in New England, and interact extraordinarily well under the circumstances. If you don’t look for anything close to the short story or film version, you might just find all kinds of ways to interpret what is essentially an allegory about humanity out of control and nature in revolt.

“The Birds” (through October 1)

At  59E59

Fiorello

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The cast, with Rebecca Brudner as Thea and Austin Scott Lombardi as Fiorello front and center 
(Photos by Alexander Hill)

The best and most probably generous way to enjoy this production of Fiorello is to pretend you are not in New York City at the otherwise resident home of the Classic Stage Company but rather in retreat to Stockbridge, Mass where the Berkshire Theatre Group first presented its revival of the wonderful but barely remembered 1959Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical this past summer. It is this production that has been moved lock, stock and barrel to East 13th Street for those who might like to see what a youthful, talented cast and company has done with it.

What they have done with it is significant because there will now not likely ever be a full scale Broadway revival. And this production, as gleeful and exuberant as it is being performed, is just not up to Broadway or even normal Off-Broadway standards. Fans of the City Center Encore Series have already had the pleasure of two delightful concert stagings in recent times of this musical about the former New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, neither of which prompted a move to Broadway. This is not to suggest that a real powerhouse performer in the title role couldn’t have made the difference.

At any rate, and once you relax and submit to the budgetary and artistic limitations of the production imposed on it by director Bob Moss and to those of the cast members, you can sit back and enjoy the terrific score by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock that is played most earnestly by Alev Gokce Erem on the violin and Robert Frost on the keyboard.

Being topical and timely in this election year is certainly a help for this musical that boasts a rather nifty and fairly accurate book by the revered scribes George Abbott and Jerome Weidman. It’s all about the rise of a head-strong young lawyer as he gains political prestige in congress and onward to become Mayor of NYC even after a blistering defeat to Jimmy Walker in 1929. To the book’s credit, the women in his life are not treated as peripheral entities, but rather as commendably and sensitively dramatized personalities.

Filed with the zingiest, singiest, music (the kind you don’t hear any more) by Bock and the still with us and writing composer/lyricist Harnick, it’s virtually impossible to sit still in your seat. If only the cast were able to muster up more of the panache, spunk and sparkle that is already inherent in the material. The ethnic and other  dancing created by choreographer is lively but pedestrian.

There is no question that Austin Scott Lombardi is putting his heart and soul in his interpretation of Fiorello, but his physical frame and rigorous posturing is closer to what we might envision about another NYC Mayor - Jimmy Walker. But Lombardi does his best  to be a symbol during an epoch period in New York City history. What I did love about his aggressively endearing performance that he made me believe than an honest politician is not a figment of my imagination.

Despite a woefully misguided and inept attempt to give his cronies the realistic sound of New Yawkers, I particularly liked the energy expended by them and particularly Ryan Morsbach as Ben, Fiorello’s political cohort, in the two great tough and brilliantly cynical numbers “Politics and Poker,” and “Little Tin Box.” Chelsea Cree Groen as Dora the sweatshop girl Fiorello helps during a strike, nails the hilarious “I Love a Cop” with her kittenish voice. That gorgeous ballad “Til Tomorrow” still manages to bring forth tears, as beautifully sung by a terrific Rebecca Brudner, as Thea the woman whose admiration for Fiorello grows to love as his first wife. Katie Birenboim, as Fiorello’s secretary who becomes his second wife has a golden moment with another lovely ballad “The Very Next Man.”

A hand is due for the chorus cuties for their razzamatazz number “Gentleman Jimmy. Unfortunately, there was too much awkward and intrusive moving of scenery that  gave the show a community theater look. The costumes fulfilled their era-invoking duties. I wish I felt moved to cast a yea vote for this revival, but I’m still resigned to abstain until the real new deal comes along.

"Cats" at the Neil Simon Theatre

Leona Lewis as Grizabella

The musical “Cats” was an instant phenomenon when it opened on Broadway in 1982. The London hit arrived on these shores ready and able to captivate audiences for the next eighteen years. Well,....most audiences anyway. There were also those who responded with a yawn and even a cat-nap during the show. Personally I remember having mixed feelings about the felines on parade, those that had been recruited to crawl, leap, lounge and levitate around the reconstructed interior of the Winter Garden Theatre. As some of the antics were thrilling and some boring, I wondered what my reaction would be to this first Broadway revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s now almost legendary musical based on T.S. Eliot’s collection of short poems “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” Forgive me for being cute, but I am giving it four meows, which I guess is like giving the show the highest rating in cat-dom.

The Neil Simon Theatre has been picked to be the large garbage dump site where you will undoubtedly notice that the designer John Napier has made (as he did originally) all the refuse and litter larger than life and as seen from a cat’s perspective. It has been brilliantly conceived to cover the theatre’s side walls as well the stage. Also recreated are Napier’s stunning costumes some of which should find their way onto haute couture runways by next Fall. But what impressed me most with this production was the phenomenal dancing in a show that is more of a full-length ballet with songs rather than the reverse as I had remembered.

To this end and assuming you may not have a working knowledge of Eliot’s odes to cats, their charms and idiosyncrasies, talents and temperaments, you will fast enough become fans of such cat-abouts as Mistoffolees, Cassandra, Grizabella, Mungojerrie, Rumpleteazer and the others who do get to run and down the aisles. Otherwise their acrobatic carousing and cavorting on the stage is often breathtakingly. I might be wrong but I suspect that the original choreography by Gillian Lynne has been greatly enhanced by choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and is now more excitingly performed by this extraordinary company.

If Webber’s melodious and mirthful score sounds like the return of an old friend, it is the misty-eyes ballad “Memory” that gives the show an added lift as interpreted by British pop star Leona Lewis. Her tough-as-nails version is unique enough to re-define the aging and spent Grizabella and interesting enough to invite comparison to the more poignant interpretation by Betty Buckley who originally played the role. Those already familiar with the show will hopefully be surprised as well as pleased by the additional glam and glitz given to some numbers, but it all adds up, under the full moon and the magical lighting of designer Natasha Katz, to a purr-fectly thrilling festival of “Cats.” 

"Cats" (Opened July 31, 2016)

Neil Simon Theatre,  250 West 52nd Street