“Pygmalion” at the Sheen Center (15 Bleeker Street) through April 22, 2018

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Eric Tucker and Vaishnavi Sharma

Remember “Pygmalion”? It’s “My Fair Lady” without the Ascot Gavotte. If you share the English-speaking world’s fondness for George Bernard Shaw’s clever and witty version of the mythology, you will admit that his most adored comedy more than holds its own even without Lerner and Loewe’s “loverly” score. That the cherished classic hold up beautifully even with a healthy dose of cross-dressing-double casting and an unorthodox, if expediently workable staging by the always adventurous Off Broadway Bedlam company. This staging, under the direction of Eric Tucker, attests to the work’s inexhaustible ability to charm.

Once my eyes and my preconceived sense of artistic design made peace with John McDermott’s close to thread-bare setting - an arrangement of chairs and a table or two among a collection of noncollectable artifacts - I found myself having a ripping good time. The play begins it romp through the Shavian terrain in the vestibule of the theater where the audience stands among the players and listens to the opening scene that takes place on the street of London's Covent Garden.

Soon enough we are ushered into the seating section that is on three sides of the playing area in the Sheen Center where you are as likely as I was, to be smitten by the spunky, cockney Eliza (Vaishnavi Sharma) who speaks with a decidedly Indian twist, her self-absorbed mentor Professor Henry Higgins (Eric Tucker), his sportingly supportive associate Colonel Pickering (Nigel Gore) and eventually the irresistibly wily Alfred P. Doolittle (Rajesh Bose.)

The casting blithely brings to the fore the  British colonialism that is alluded to in the original text but often dismissed. And the subsequent surprises that pop up regarding the appearance of others in the play shall not be spoiled by me as they provide laughter where you might not have reason to expect it.

Tucker is splendidly disagreeable and opportunistic as Higgins, the insensitive, emotionally remote chauvinist whose heartlessly linguistic instructions are the engine of the plot. The Delhi-born Sharma makes the stunning transformation from flower  girl into duchess with a neo-feminist claim while still reminding us she is a chip off Doolittle’s block. Bose brings a craftily debonair quality to Doolittle while Gore’s Pickering endures by being endearing.

The best laughs are earned by Edmund Lewis who portrays Mrs. Higgins as a softly admonishing battleaxe and in the same scene as the unsuitable suitor Freddy Eynsford-Hill (Don’t ask). Be prepared for some chapeau-swapping and a kind of musical chairs in this staging’s most loony moments. Not lost among the more gregarious of her play-mates is Annabel Capper as the no-nonsense Mrs. Pearce who doubles in more nonsensical ways as Clara Eynsford-Hill and a parlor maid. Perhaps not the most respectful of “Pygmalions” you are apt to see in a lifetime, but the Bedlam version is surely making Shaw smile down upon it, even probably against his own will.  

“Angels in America” (through May 31, 2018) at the Neil Simon Theatre, 250 west 52nd Street

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Nathan Lane
Photo: Brinkhoff & Mogenburg

New York is the recipient of the stunning and superb revival of the two-part masterpiece “Angels in America” from London where Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play actually began a quarter century ago and a year before it took Broadway by storm in 1993. Repeating their roles in this glorious new National Theater production are Nathan Lane as Roy Cohen and Andrew Garfield as Prior Walter. The king-size play is being presented as a unit with its two lengthy parts presented in consecutive evenings or with a matinee and evening option. “Millennium Approaches” is the first part of this massive work subtitled “A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.”

The best news is that “Angels...” has landed with its wings intact. It is a seven-hour, epic-scaled play that uses the AIDS epidemic as a defining metaphor for the eroding of our country’s moral, spiritual and ethical postures during the 1980’s. There is, at the end of the first three and one-half hours (including two intermissions) a feeling that a remarkably stirring and unconventional theatrical experience is passionately and purposefully unfolding. Whether or not you have seen the play as produced in 2003 as a mini-series by HBO, the excellent Off Broadway revival in 2010 or even perhaps even the opera,  the original play, however slightly tweaked over the years by Kushner, remains a must-see dramatic event.

It is a huge, impressive endeavor upon which Kushner has implanted much that is skilled and much that is soulful. Tarnished only slightly by a somewhat archetypal embrace of characters and situations, it vehemently condemns the collectively biased course that our nation took during the Reagan-Bush era. How the play translates and illuminates its message in today’s polarized political landscape is all too terrifyingly clear.

Episodic, but not fragmented, “Angels...” revolves around the fatefully integrated lives of five principal characters. Each in his or her own way is either discomforted, disenfranchised or disillusioned. The characters include a gay couple, one of whom is dying of AIDS, a repressed homosexual Mormon Republican lawyer, his hallucinating agoraphobic wife, and Roy Cohen, the opportunistic closeted homosexual lawyer. All plummet through the plays’ social, political and psychological mayhem as well as expediently through set designer Ian MacNeil’s impressive neon framed mobile settings.

Both parts of “Angels in America” have a wildly unconventional, part-real-part-fantasy, part-farce - structure that not only stretches previously prescribed dramatic boundaries, but also gives its characters room to coexist in unorthodox counterpoint to each other.

Marianne Elliott’s splendid direction unleashes an exhilarating freedom of expressiveness in each interlocking scene, as well as within each of the extraordinary actors, many of whom double, triple and quadruple their roles. In this regard, Denise Gough, Susan Brown, and Amanda Lawrence stand out for their multiple excursions.

Given Kushner’s penchant for broad and brash humor, many of the roles are vitally charged with large doses of vitriol, vinegar and especially in the case of Cohen, a distinctly vituperative sleaziness. Lane is to put it mildly, spectacularly brilliant as Cohen, the abrasive, abusive McCarthyite who attempts to further the career of his protégé Joseph Pitt (Lee Pace) a guilt-ridden Mormon and a Justice Department lawyer. Pitt’s personal problems are not only standing in his way up the political ladder, they are seen infecting the behavior of his neglected, valium-addicted wife Harper. Harper is given a memorable state of poignant disorientation by Gough.  

But at the heart of the play lies the painful, imploding relationship of Louis (James McArdle), a Jewish clerk and Prior (Garfield) his dying WASP cross-dressing lover. Although we see the tortured-by-his-desertion Louis wearing his conscience on his sleeve it is the ravaged cloak of impending death worn on the frail shoulders of the heart-breaking Prior, that prepares us for the emotionally explosive finale of Part I, the arrival through a shattering ozone layer of the winged messenger Angel (Amanda Lawrence). “Isn’t this a little too Stephen Spielberg?” asks the frightened Prior, who has already had visitations from deceased relatives.

“Perestroika” (Part II) concludes with a fantastical and prophetic pilgrimage: one taken by the heart, produced by the mind, and guided by the soul of Prior Walter, the play’s protagonist. Never preachy, almost always funnier than you would expect, the play’s message of a new dawn basks in the light of earthly reality.

The shifting relationships of the characters we first met in Part I continue to shock, astound, baffle and amuse us. But now these left and right wingers, the straights and the gays are on the verge of resolving their dilemmas. Except for the epilogue, the action unfolds in New York City in 1986 and follows Prior’s newly prescribed destiny as an unlikely, if noticeably unwilling, prophet of his age.

Dying but spiritually evolving, Prior is driven by a desire to live. He challenges the directives of the descended Angel who has just appointed him a prophet. Allowed a distinct temperament, Lawrence portrays the winged messenger with a playfully feisty attitude. Ascending in a dizzying dream to heaven - a scene that wryly recalls Dorothy’s trip to Oz - Prior takes his case before an entire council of angels. It is thrilling to watch this amazing cast explore the depths and desires of their unforgettable characters. And Elliott’s  upward and onward  direction is no less dynamic in its course than is Kushner’s astounding text.

“Perestroika” doesn’t depend on restraint. It relies on the wisdom of wit and comic intrusions. When it comes to laughs, it shames many recent so-called comedies. A bold sexual coupling might begin on an erotic note, but ends humorously in a crescendo of harmonic discord. Given a rafter-shaking resonance by Lane, Cohen’s virulent tirades, even at the moment of his death, defines his self-immortalizing gall.

Some characters who seemed fragmented in Part I become more important in Part II. The former drag queen Belize (a terrific Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) is Cohn’s no-nonsense nurse and Joe Pitt’s mother (Susan Brown) a devout Mormon finds an unexpected resurgence of her real self and of her faith as she unwittingly becomes an inspiration to Prior. Inspired is the only word to describe this wondrously theatrical double-header that reveals the scarred core of this world and a sacred corner of the next.

“Twelfth Night, or What You Will” Opened December 14 at Classic Stage Company

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 The Fiasco Players  Photo: Joan Marcus

There is not a better way to celebrate the holidays than a visit to the Classic Stage Company where they are hosting the Fiasco Theater’s entertaining and very funny production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night, or What You Will.” If you are wondering what play to introduce your child to the Bard right now, this one is it.

Every now and then there is that rare confluence of conception, acting, directing, and in this instance a lot of extra songs and (with no apologies) silly cavorting that adds up to sheer pleasure for two and one half hours. We have heard for years from contrarian Bardologists how this is arguably either a perfect comedy and also one of Shakespeare’s weaker plays. How about just letting it stand now forever as his best and most appealing to all ages and generations.

Notwithstanding the sublime imported production from the Globe Shakespeare Company with Mark Rylance in 2013 (playing Olivia) this more modestly staged but even more immodestly performed production has beautifully addressed the play’s outrageously convoluted plotting and considered the bountiful mix of tomfoolery and romance in a most delightful way.  

Here is a totally disarmingly staging with only a few props and set pieces, actors who not only sing and dance but play musical instruments. This staging is filled to the brim with the kind of boldly comical conceits that are allowed to take precedence over the issues of sexual identity that can sometimes smother our pleasure. That’s a good thing for those of us who are more apt to welcome the antics of the secondary characters over the plight of the principals.

Just to refresh your memory: The courting of wealthy and titled Lady Olivia by the personable but dull Duke Orsino of Illyria becomes complicated by the arrival of Viola, a young girl who masquerades as a page to the duped Duke after a traumatic separation from her twin Sebastian during a violent storm at sea. Viola unwittingly falls in love with the Duke only to discover that Olivia has fallen head over heels in love with her as Cesario, the page. The arrival of look-alike Sebastian to Ilyria, who, instantly smitten with ardor upon seeing the fair Olivia, adds another layer of burlesque to a comedy already over-layered with “what you will.”

If Shakespeare’s delightful crew of secondary characters is usually encouraged to run amuck in order to confuse us as well as the lovers, they suddenly seem to have inherited an importantly comedic weight. Arguably strained and incredulous, the story nevertheless, seems to benefit from the co-direction by Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld. This is not to imply that the sentiments of the play have been forfeited for the sake of the silliness that now seems to pervade the action. Those who savor the former will also be rewarded.

That suave sentimentalist Duke Orsino is winningly played by the co-director Brody. Traditionally the Duke is remembered best for his brief yearnings for the love of Lady Olivia (played with an appealing vibrancy by Fiasco co-artistic director Jessie Austrian.) Orsino is mostly troubled by his attraction to Viola/Cesario (a wonderfully spunky Emily Young) an issue that adds a dimension to his conflicted personality. It is no small feat that Young makes as good an impression as a woman as she does in the guise of a man. Her sweet but commanding acting style is a cause for celebration. As Sebastian, Javier Ignacio may not get as much stage time as her twin but he gives us a robust account of an easily provoked and more easily infatuated young man.

Most happily, the antics appear organic to the broadly comical artistry displayed by Andy Grotelueschen  as a wild-haired and bearded Sir Toby Belch and Paco Tolson,  as his dim-witted but amusingly dapper sidekick Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Paul L. Coffey projects just the right amount of deplorable arrogance as the maligned "affectionate ass" Malvolio. This, as he succumbs to the unkind plot machinations as devised by the clever servant Maria, lustily played by Tina Chilip, making her Fiasco debut. There’s no fool like a glib fool (“Better a witty fool than a foolish wit”) and Ben Steinfeld’s disarming Feste is a feast.

The costume designer Emily Rebholz outfits the company in humorously contemporary casual. Viola and Sebastian in twin brown fisherman knit sweaters. How cool is that? The directors have taken what is naturally strained and equally incredulous in Shakespeare to heart. But they take Shakespeare’s mixture of parody and poignancy just one or two steps farther into the realm of sidesplitting bliss. . .all to the good and all for our merriment.

“Twelfth Night, or What You Will” Opened December 14 at Classic Stage Company, 136 East 13th Street Ends January 6, 2018

"Cruel Intentions" Opened December 11 at the (le) Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street

Lauren Zakrin in “Cruel Intentions  Photo credit: Jenny Anderson

Sometimes the experience of being with an audience that is largely half your age and that knows not only more than you do about what we are about to see but knows every line and situation as if it was “Casablanca” can be amusing as well as eye-opening. Such was the case with me and my companion at the press preview of “Cruel Intentions,” a stage adaptation by co-creators Jordon Ross and Lindsey Rosin of the cult 1999 film that is now entertaining its fans at (le) Poisson Rouge, a nightclub in Greenwich Village.

The experience, most of it really good and definitely exhilarating, began even as we approached the club on Bleecker Street a good half hour before curtain time to see a long line stretched down the street waiting for the doors open. Many of the seats inside are on a first come-first served basis, others can be reserved. The word was evidently out before the reviews that this production (after its debut in L.A. in 2015 and a remounting in 2016)  was rekindling the same vibes that made it a hit film and an unexpected phenomenon with young audiences almost a generation ago. We shared a table with two fans who knew every word, song and scene like we knew “Casablanca.”

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Although the film was inspired by the classic 1782 French novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” (itself the source for a number of both film and stage adaptations), it tapped into the pop culture of teens at the time and catapulted the career of a young Reese Witherspoon. What it also did was to make its story about sex, seduction, deception and cruelty relevant to a young audience by setting it in the present time and in and around an upper East Side prep school.

The plot about two diabolical step siblings who set out to deflower and defame schoolmates hit a chord. Speaking of chord, the film was filled with pop and rock hits of the time...a perfect segue for the stage adaptation which has added more pop tunes of the time as well as including those already on the film’s soundtrack to further engine the characters and narrative. Here are a few: “Lovefool,” “Just a Girl,” Only Happy When It Rains,” and “Bittersweet Symphony.” It you get it, you got it.

   

Not that you could hear most of the lyrics from the cheering of recognition from a packed room (including standees) of each iconic song (don’t ask) and each sexy situation. More importantly, director Lindsey Rosin and choreographer Jennifer Weber put their talented company through their paces in a show that moves with the fury of a hurricane. More a concert staging than a fully conceptualized show, “Cruel Intentions,” nevertheless, is performed with a terrific band on a small stage that gets plenty of action, often spilling out into the audience.  

While shadow hanky-panky and discreet nudity are cleverly displayed, the trendy couture designs also reveal plenty about the characters. Among the many standout performers who revel with expressive abandon in the sex-capades are a seductive Lauren Zakrin as the conniving Kathryn and the hard body Constantine Rousouli, as the licentious, hard-hearted Sebastian. Good voices, great bodies and amusingly insinuating performances are factors that make “Cruel Intentions” an entertaining variation on those liaisons of lore.

“Cruel Intentions” (through February 19)

Tickets: General Admission: $59 for standing room, $79 for table seating and $109 for reserved seating.

“Oedipus El Rey” at the Public Theater’s LuEsther Hall through December 3

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The cast    photo credit: Joan Marcus

Luis Alfaro’s “Oedipus El Rey” is one of the more exciting of the new plays to open Off Broadway so far this season. A collaboration between The Sol Project and the Public Theater, it is a strikingly new approach to Sophocles classic tragedy “Oedipus Rex.” Alfaro, making his New York theater debut, has twisted and turned the famous plot just a bit and transported the original’s horrific romantics from ancient Greece to contemporary South Central Los Angeles. That the old story resonates quite remarkably for us today is due, of course, to the playwright’s skill. But that we can still be stunned by its theme - the force of destiny - and the plight of cursed, ill-fated lovers is also the result of a terrific production under the direction of Chay Yew.

Splendid casting of all the supporting roles is a boost but it is the performances of Juan Castano as Oedipus and Sandra Delgado as Jocasta that propel this production that should leave you as blinded as I by the sheer force of presentation.

Visually impressive while also minimalist in conception and execution, the play begins within the cells of the California State Prison where inmates (who serve as a Greek chorus) inform us of the curse that drives Oedipus and that will determine his fate. A young Latino who has spent most of his youth in prisons for various non-violent crimes, Oedipus has been tutored in prison by an old blind man Tiresias (Julio Monge) who saved and raised Oedipus as his own son after the boy’s real father Laius (Juan Francisco Villa) had order the boy killed right after his birth. The learned Tiresias had amazingly been incarcerated in the same prison with Oedipus after committing a robbery.

Intense physical training and intellectual studies make have made Oedipus quite a specimen of manhood, but his fate is, nevertheless, sealed when he is released and in an unexpected encounter kills Laius a belligerent man whom he doesn’t know is his real father. The core of the play is passion as it intercedes with the inherent violence and the maintenance of power in the Latino hierarchy in street gangs. Oedipus falls almost instantly in love with Jocasta, the sister of his friend Creon (Joel Perez) not knowing she is the widow of the man he killed, also his real father. Yes, just as the old story tells it, Oedipus unwittingly falls in love with the still beautiful and still in mourning Jocasta. She has lived with no clue that her baby may have survived and has now come back into her life.

Be prepared for one of the most explicit but beautifully staged nude love scenes. Sensitively and sensually choreographed, it doesn’t compromise the integrity of a play about embracing your karma and ultimately having to pay the dept for your deeds. UnkleDave’s Fight-House deserves kudos for directing the intimacies (also staging some exciting fight scenes) It doesn’t hurt that both Castano and Delgado have beautiful bodies, either exposed or wearing the fine costumes designed by Anita Yavich.

One of visual highlights is Oedipus’s encounter with a trio of mystics who morph into a dragon. Wow! Also splendid lighting designs by Lap Chi Chu. Don’t  worry if you only have a vague idea about Oedipus, that famous Freudian complex or the story that prompted the name for the neurosis. The playwright has made it immediate and accessible and above all created with the help of an imaginative production team, the kind of sexy-visceral theatrical experience you won’t soon forget.

“Tiny Beautiful Things” at the Public’s Newman Theater (now through December 31st)

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Nia Vardalos  (photo: Joan Marcus)

Sincere but why? That is how I responded to the dramatic form given to a stream of popular inter-active on-line advice columns originally written by Cheryl Strayed, a non-professional known to her net-work of help-seekers as “Dear Sugar.” Some of these have been adapted from her book for the stage by writer/actress Nia Vardalos (“My Greek Wedding”) who stands in for Strayed. As commendably directed by Thomas Kail in this return engagement (presumably by popular demand), the exchanges are all semi-passive, a steady stream of shared and responsive confessionals and quires of a very personal nature.

These are the typical quandaries that people find themselves mired in such as romance, sex, death, physical abuse and drugs, the columns had built-in pathos with their notable displays of empathy and expressions of compassion for the troubled souls. Listening to advice, no matter how well-intended or sincerely spoken, does not make great theater. To be fair, the audience at the performance I attended sat attentively while I started to squirm about midway through the seventy-five minutes.

Vardalos plays the well-meaning guru with an engaged sincerity (that word again.) This, as she busily inhabits the excellently designed living-room, dining room and kitchen area of Dear Sugar’s home as well designed by Rachel Hauck. We not only hear but see the people behind the back and forth internet exchanges. These characters are effectively played by Teddy Canez, Hubert Point-du Jour and Natalie Woolams-Torres. They wander in and about as required and provide what little action the play provides. This device certainly gives some life support to what would otherwise be simply Dear Sugar’s exchanges with her flock/followers.

What I found most interesting is how Dear Sugar used her own traumatic life experiences as a springboard for a personal philosophy - a mixture of metaphysics and psychology - as a practical process for healing. This has apparently worked for others as it had worked for herself as a working professional, wife and mother. The actors make a concerted effort to not sound like they are reading their epistolary-like text but it doesn’t solve the problem of this being a play without any solidified confrontations.

Nevertheless, some very sad stories are revealed and you  would have to have a heart of stone to not be moved to some degree. Granted that these are all interesting characters who are yearning for love and understanding that comes back to them neatly wrapped in wise and meaningful advice. They also remain, however, part of the heart-breaking, complex, poignant, and tragic conditions and components that have comprised the human experience since the beginning of civilization and that have been more affectingly and effectively dramatized since plays were first written.