11/14/22: Ohio State Murders
What: Playwright Adrienne Kennedy makes her long-awaited Broadway debut in the newly-renamed James Earl Jones Theatre. This play, originally written in 1992 as part of the Alexander Plays--a cycle of plays featuring Suzanne Alexander--shows Suzanne remembering her time as one of the few Black female students at Ohio State University, and the circumstances surrounding the violent conclusion of her time there.
And? Adrienne Kennedy is an incredible writer. She does not let the audience off the hook. This play, a poetic stream of consciousness, a monologue of memory for Suzanne where the other characters softly enter, softly exit, is unflinching in Alexander's recounting of her grief. Audra McDonald's performance is meticulous and affecting; she keeps mostly in her higher range as she speaks, in what I think is meant to be an imitation of Kennedy's own voice (pre- and post-show the sound system plays an audio of an interview with the playwright), as a nod to the acknowledged autobiographical threads in much of Kennedy's work. The design and direction by Kenny Leon echo the poetry in Kennedy's writing, with snow falling softly but unendingly through a large crack in the back wall, a space that is both a corruption of the sacred academic space and also a bird's eye view of the ravine where one of the murders took place (scenic design Beowulf Boritt).
11/16/22: Chester Bailey
What: Irish Rep presents real-life father and son Reed Birney and Ephraim Birney in the New York premiere of Joseph Dougherty's play about a young man working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1945 who suffers a catastrophic injury, and the attempts of his doctor to bring him to terms with the reality of his new existence.
And? John Lee Beatty's scenic design--creating simultaneously Chester's hospital room, Penn Station, the inside of a warship--is frankly stunning, and an excellent incorporation of Irish Rep's load-bearing columns. It's beautifully and subtly illuminated by Brian MacDevitt's lighting design and given a cavernous sense when needed by Brendan Aanes's sound design. Both Birneys gives excellent and nuanced performances. Truly, there's a lot of good here. But. I can't get past two fairly large problematic elements inherent to the writing of this play.
One, which the NYT review also calls out, is the tired, troubling, and frankly angering bogeyman of the queer predator. Can we not? Can we please, at long last, not? Yes, when I hear a character's diagnosis in 1945 to include among his illnesses an "uncontrollable homosexual impulse," I cringe but also know that's a sign of the times. But to have it then equated without interrogation with sexual predation, I just. Can we please not?
My other issue is the romanticizing yet again of mental illness. To be clear, I'm not here to stigmatize mental illness, or to equate it with neurodiversity. But I find romanticizing delusion a rather dangerous tendency in the theater and film (areas where we have been hearing way too many stories of excusing or romanticizing toxic behavior in the name of art); it's no accident reviews keep comparing this play to Equus. That one was a problem, too.
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| Reed Birney and Ephraim Birney as Dr. Philip Cotton and Chester Bailey. Photo by Carol Rosegg. |
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