What: An import from The West End's Royal Court Theatre, Dennis Kelly's Girls & Boys is a one woman show, split between an audience-address monologue and memories of raising her children at home. An exploration of family, self-knowledge, and the nature of violence.
And? Absolutely incredible performance from Carey Mulligan - it seemed less a performance and more a real person speaking to us. The marriage of Es Devlin's set design and Luke Halls's video design was elegant and stunning, a beautiful physicalization of the Woman's journey. Kelly's script is well-built and well-directed by Lyndsey Turner.
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| Carey Mulligan as Woman. Photo by Marc Brenner. |
6/20/18: Little Rock
What: A play with music about The Little Rock Nine, nine black teenagers who broke segregation at Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. Per the program note, the play is "based on research, numerous testimonials, and interviews conducted over a 13-year period."
And? The cast wasn't bad, but the script had the subtlety of an anvil. This was such an important moment in our country's pockmarked history of race relations and discrimination, and I wanted something more out of it than a pedestrian series of scenes explaining the conflict.
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| Damian Jermaine Thompson, Rebekah Brockman, Charlie Hudson III, Stephanie Umoh, Justin Cunningham, Peter O'Connor, Shanice Williams, and Anita Welch as the Little Rock Nine. Photo by Carol Rosegg. |
6/22/18: Fire in Dreamland
What: On the boardwalk in Coney Island, Kate meets Dutch aspiring filmmaker Jaap, a charismatic walking red flag, and falls under his spell as he tries to make a film about the 1911 fire.
And? I was so excited about this cast (Rebecca Naomi Jones, Enver Gjokaj, and Kyle Beltran), but was only somewhat engaged in the play itself. I don't really know what I was supposed to take away from the show.
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| Rebecca Naomi Jones and Enver Gjokaj as Kate and Jaap. Photo by Joan Marcus. |
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