Monday, December 18, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W51: The Country Wife, Christmas Spectacular, Lookingglass Alice

 12/11/23: The Country Wife
What: Red Bull presents a benefit concert staging of Maltby and Shire's adaptation of William Wycherley's play about sexual escapades, with a revisionist slant.
And? What's funny is, right before seeing this performance, I was talking with a friend about the problem of revisals (problems include: changing things without the (dead) author's consent but pretending it's still the same work; "fixing" the wrong things and utterly demolishing the stakes in the process; and maybe if the show is enough of a problem we just shouldn't do it? maybe we just write a new show? how about that? the songs from Carousel aren't going anywhere but I don't need to see that show ever again. anyway). And this is an interesting solution: a play-within-a-play adaptation of a problematic play where one of the characters articulates her issues with the play as written and then proceeds to rewrite it. It's not a perfect solve: a lot of the grosser elements are still there, but now the show is calling them out. But the audience is still expected to applaud the songs about the grosser elements so ... it's a bit of trying to have their cake and eating it too. We had a number of covers going on last minute for the concert staging, including the story's hero, with Nicholas Edwards ably and charismatically stepping in for Jelani Remy. And as a special treat, this is now the second time I've seen Richard Maltby, Jr. step in to cover a role in a show he wrote, so that was pretty charming too.




What: The annual Christmas show from the Radio City Rockettes.
And? Funnily enough, this marks my first time actually seeing a Rockettes show! It's definitely worth experiencing if you've never gone, but I don't know that I'll make an effort to catch it every year going forward. The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers dance is really something else. I think that was my favorite.


Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Best Theater of 2023: Well, we survived, I guess

Usually I use this space to talk about how the year of theater has felt, maybe some of the highlights, compare the trends with previous seasons and my engagement with them, and thoughts about the future. I don't know that I have the energy to do that this year. This year has found too many ways to break my heart, and I don't have much left to give. I'm scared and sad and tired.

So this is what I can give: this year I saw 107 pieces of theater, with 6 of them being repeats within the year, so: 101 unique pieces of theater. Of those 101, 62 were plays, 28 were musicals, and 11 were streaming.

Here are the top eleven, in chronological order of when I saw them.

The Coast Starlight (LCT/Newhouse, Off-B; watched February)

The company of The Coast Starlight. Photo by T. Charles Erikson.

The Jungle (A Good Chance/National Theatre/Young Vic/St. Ann's Warehouse, Off-B; watched March)

Ben Turner and Jonathan Nyati as Salar and Mohammed in The Jungle.
Photo by Marc Brenner.

Life of Pi (National Theatre/Schoenfeld, B; watched March)

Hiran Abeysekera and puppeteers as Pi and Richard Parker in Life of Pi
(London run). Photo by Johan Persson.

Describe the Night (Steppenwolf, Regional; watched March)

Yasen Peyankov and James Vincent Meredith as Nikolai and Isaac in
Describe the Night. Photo by Michael Brosilow.

Villette (Lookingglass Theatre, Regional; watched March)

Debo Balogun and Mi Kang as Paul Emmanuel and Lucy Snowe in Villette.
Photo by Liz Lauren.

Rough Trade (The Tank, Off-Off-B; watched April)

Derek Christopher Murphy and Max Kantor as Finch and Hawk in Rough
Trade
. Photo by Hunter Canning.

& Juliet (Sondheim, B; watched May)

Lorna Courtney, Betsy Wolfe, Justin David Sullivan, and Melanie La Barrie
as Juliet, April, May, and Angelique in & Juliet. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

Jaja's African Hair Braiding (MTC/Friedman, B; watched September)

Nana Mensah, Lakisha May, Maechi Aharaanwa, and Kalyne Coleman as 
Aminata, client, Ndidi, and client (I'm so sorry, both Lakisha May and 
Kalyne Coleman played multiple roles brilliantly, but now I can't remember
which was which), in Jaja's African Hair Braiding. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

Swing State (Audible/Minetta Lane, Off-B; watched September)

Mary Beth Fisher and Bubba Weiler as Peg and Ryan in Swing State.
Photo by Liz Lauren.

Nosferatu, a 3D Symphony of Horror (TIQ/Skirball, Streaming; watched October)

Cover art for Nosferatu, a 3D Symphony of Horror.

Purlie Victorious (Music Box, B; watched November)

Jay O. Sanders, Billy Eugene Jones, Kara Young, and Leslie Odom, Jr. as
Ol' Cap'n Cotchipee, Gitlow Judson, Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins, and 
Purlie Victorious in Purlie Victorious. Photo by Marc J. Franklin.


Monday, December 11, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W50: The Time Machine

Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

Monday, December 4, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W49: Gutenberg! The Musical!, The Gardens of Anuncia, Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors, Life & Times of Michael K

What: Scott Brown and Anthony King's musical about two buddies who decided to write an unresearched, wildly fictionalized musical about the invention of the printing press. This production reunites the original stars of The Book of Mormon: Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells.
And? It's fine. It's dumb. Sometimes it's a fun dumb. It was clearly written by two straight guys, and I could do without the jokes about the fat character eating a lot of food ha ha ha isn't it funny to laugh at fat people eating gosh they have no self control, also have you noticed that fat people are unlovable. The jokes about German people being antisemitic (though I've been told were revised in the wake of the pogrom on October 7) are also not ... terribly funny to me right now. I wonder if I would have liked it better Off-Broadway.

Andrew Rannells and Josh Gad. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

What: Lincoln Center presents a new musical by Michael John LaChiusa, a memoir for Graciela Daniele, who also directs and co-choreographs the show. It is a tribute to the three women who raised her in Argentina under Peron's oppressive government: her mother, her grandmother, and her aunt.
And? It's fantastic to hear a new LaChiusa score, especially one performed by such a talented set of performers as Priscilla Lopez, Eden Espinosa, Andréa Burns, Mary Testa, and Kalyn West (oh god, especially the stunning harmonies of Espinosa, Burns, and Testa). I think this show isn't quite finished yet, but its strengths are worth the rest of it. The magical realism, the family relationships, the scenic and lighting design, these are all effective. What is less effective is the attempt to bring in the pieces of Daniele's (or I should say Anuncia's) life after Argentina. It's thinner, it's without much grounding, and I'm impatient to return to the more visceral story in Argentina. I want to be shown, not told, and everything post-Argentina is just something told (well, not everything--the deer stuff is great). I think with a bit more tightening of the writing, this could be great.

Priscilla Lopez and Kalyn West as Older Anuncia and Younger Anuncia.
Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

Monday, November 27, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W48: Hadestown, Purlie Victorious, Arcadia, Here We Are, Kimberly Akimbo, Scene Partners, All the Devils are Here, I Can Get it For You Wholesale

11/20/23: Hadestown
a repeat visit, but with an entirely new cast. I'm delighted to report that I loved the replacement cast as much as the original (including Jordan Fisher, making his debut performance in the role, and absolutely breaking hearts with his open, honest face). Philip Boykin's bass voice is so perfectly suited for Hades, and the strength of his lower register alone is worth the price of admission. Solea Pfeiffer brings a more honest edge to Eurydice than I'd seen before, and I love it. And Lilias White and Betty Who both have charisma and presence to spare. Several years into its run, Hadestown hasn't lost any of its vitality.

Betty Who and Phillip Boykin as Persephone and Hades.
Photo by Matthew Murphy.

11/21/23: Purlie Victorious
What: The Broadway revival of Ossie Davis's play (perhaps slightly better known for its musical adaptation, Purlie), about the Jim Crow south, and Purlie Victorious's efforts to liberate his sharecropping family, claim a withheld inheritance, and rebuild his church.
And? I knew very little about this play going in, but I loved every moment of it. It's outrageously funny, but somehow always in a well-grounded way: none of these people are cartoons, even if the situations they get into seem outlandish. I did keep thinking how, in lesser hands than director Kenny Leon and this top-notch cast, that Ossie Davis's clever and well-crafted script could have veered easily into caricature, but it never does. Leslie Odom, Jr., is all charisma and smooth fast-talking plans, Kara Young is adorably awkward, and Billy Eugene Jones's vocal and facial agility make him completely captivating to watch every moment he's onstage. Jay O. Sanders, who's always excellent, even manages to make a human out of the monster Ol' Cap'n (one we can't wait to see the destruction of). Derek McLane's scenic design is smoothly agile and achieves a fantastic final transformation that I don't want to spoil here.

Jay O. Sanders, Billy Eugene Jones, Kara Young, and Leslie Odom, Jr. as
Ol' Cap'n Cotchipee, Gitlow Judson, Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins, and
Purlie Victorious Judson. Photo by Marc J. Franklin.

Monday, November 20, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W47: How To Dance In Ohio

What: A new musical adaptation of Alexandra Shiva's 2015 documentary, about a group of autistic young adults who, in the course of their class about social skills, plan to have a spring formal dance.
And? I haven't seen the film it's based on, though I've heard from some of my autistic friends that it has a rather infantilizing approach to its subjects, which is, well, not great, Bob. I think there was hope there would be less of that with the stage adaptation, as the conversation about ableism continues to move forward, and as the production endeavors for authenticity in casting: both in casting nonbinary actors for nonbinary roles, and in casting autistic actors for autistic roles. The theater has even provided Cool-Down Spaces in case audience members become overstimulated and need a break. There have been a lot of steps taken to actualize these characters, to give them narrative autonomy, and I do want to applaud all that as a step forward. But. There's still this insidious scent of condescension resting in the audience and maybe even inescapably in the show itself, a sort of "Good for you, you autistic people! You're on a real Broadway stage! We're so proud of you," complete with a pat on the head. I don't think it's intentional. I think a lot of people were there, like me, eager to celebrate representation and diverse stories being told. But I still felt the littlest squirm about it all. Maybe that's what comes with being the first Broadway musical to knowingly do this. I should point out, before I leave this topic, that the show does a masterful job shutting down ableist language and thinking in its most overt form, and that's something that needs to be reiterated for, well, the people in the back.

The show itself is fine. It's not stellar, but it's not terrible. I want the writing to sparkle more than it does, to reach the level that a few of its songs do reach, moments that pierce the audience, like the Act I finale, "Waves and Wires." The cast is pretty great, particularly Madison Kopec as Marideth and Amelia Fei as Caroline. Darlesia Cearcy, who plays Caroline's mother, is also notable for both her powerhouse voice and her ability to convey so much without even speaking, when she figures as Caroline's inner monologue. I'd also like to highlight Sarafina Bush's costume design, which has some truly genius moments.

Photo from the Syracuse Stage run (slightly different costume design than 
Broadway). Conor Tague, Amelia Fei, Imani Russell, Liam Pearce, Madison
Kopec, Desmond Luis Edwards, and Ashley Wool as Tommy, Caroline, Mel,
Drew, Marideth, Remy, and Jessica. Photo by Curtis Brown.


Monday, November 13, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W46: Romeo and Juliet

11/12/23: Romeo and Juliet
What: EPIC Theater's neurodiverse production of Shakespeare's classic tragedy about star-crossed lovers.
And? full review here

Nicholas Amodio, Sandy Gladstone-Karpe, and Christine Newberry as
Romeo, Friar Lawrence, and Juliet. Photo by Zui Gomez.


Margin Notes: Romeo and Juliet


Seen on: Sunday, 11/12/23.

Plot and Background
EPIC Players presents a contemporary lens on Shakespeare's classic tragedy about the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet, whose passion is not enough to survive their feuding families. EPIC Players is NYC's premiere neurodivergent theater company.

What I Knew Beforehand
I knew Romeo and Juliet, of course, and that EPIC Players is a neurodivergent theater company.

Thoughts:

Concept-wise, I think directors Max Baudisch and Meggan Dodd's vision is strong and cohesive: this is a world mirroring our world today, where the geopolitical conflicts are presented in soothing-voiced podcasts, and debated online in pithy 280-character hot takes and inflammatory videos posted out of context. This is a world where the Nurse (a brassy and delightful Sandy Gladstone-Karpe) can scroll through a Hot Men of Verona dating app, where Mercutio can post a dis video, and where the answering retort is a selfie of a Capulet biting his thumb. And in a world like this, it makes all too much sense for the duel between Mercutio (a seedily charismatic Miles Butler) and Tybalt (a full-voiced, 'roided up Dante Jayce) to be fought with extended selfie sticks--until Tybalt breaks out a weapon dealing more lasting damage than a tweet or a reel. There is even thought put into how, in a world of instant information via smartphone, both Romeo and Juliet miss some crucial status updates as the story veers toward its tragic end.

Monday, October 30, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W44: Sabbath's Theater, Nosferatu, a 3D Symphony of Horror

 10/24/23: Sabbath's Theater
What: The New Group presents Ariel Levy and John Turturro's adaptation of Philip Roth's novel, about a sex-crazed puppeteer with arthritis who is sent into a suicide ideating tailspin after the deaths of his longtime lover and an old friend.
And? While the three actors were very effective, and the exploration of loss and what it is to be left behind, repeatedly, by those who love you, was interesting, I think this show and this story are ultimately not for me. Which is fine.




What: Theater in Quarantine, in conjunction with Skirball, presents a virtual theatrical reimagining of the 1922 film, complete with 3D glasses mailed to all ticket holders.
And? Joshua William Gelb really feels like a once in a generation theatrical mind. This 35-minute performance, still all contained within TiQ's white closet, is evocative, clever, spooky, and somehow truly magical. And with the use of a sound design specifically for people wearing headphones--reminiscent of the work of Complicité--it's transportive.



Monday, October 23, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W43: The Laramie Project, Poor Yella Rednecks, Othello

What: Symphony Space hosts a benefit reading of Tectonic Theater Project's seminal docuplay about the town of Laramie, Wyoming in the wake of the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard.
And? No piece of art exists in a vacuum. There is always context. The context of when the art was made, the context of now, this living moment when the art is being experienced, the context of the audience engaging with the art. So it is that we hear the words of the people of Laramie twenty-five years ago, and can think about the progress made for legal protections for queer people, as well as the terrifying regressions in more recent years, as queer and trans youth in particular are targeted by the government. And to see this play a week after the massacre in Israel, I cannot help but pair the description of the inhumane brutality inflicted on Matthew Shepard with what is happening there. The bewilderment that people can do these terrible things to someone else because of a deep-seated but hauntingly impersonal hatred. Zubaida Ula reminds us all, "We need to own this crime. I feel. Everyone needs to own it. We are like this. We ARE like this. WE are LIKE this."




What: Manhattan Theatre Club presents a new play by Qui Nguyen, a sequel to his celebrated Vietgone. Poor Yella Rednecks has the playwright looking back on his childhood in El Dorado, Arkansas, and the sacrifices and struggles his mother endured in order to succeed in a land where she barely speaks the language.
And? I hadn't realized this was a sequel, and it really made me regret having missed Vietgone. However, this play definitely stands on its own. It's an impressive mix of satire, hip hop, puppetry, and a moving tribute to the playwright's mother and grandmother. The cast is all largely excellent (though not always up to the challenge of the hip hop sections), but I want to pay special note to the women: Maureen Sebastian as Qui's mother Tong, whose steady presence and emotional range carry and center the play; and Samantha Quan, who plays a variety of roles, each with distinct voices and physicalities, such that you forget it's all one actor. Her performance as Qui's grandmother Huong is especially powerful (and hilarious). Tim Mackabee's scenic design is a bit cumbersome (and, at least at the preview I attended, they aren't locking the rolling pieces, so we can see them move slightly when the cast interacts with them), but it doesn't ultimately get in the way of what is a good play well-performed. 

Ben Levin and Jon Norman Schneider as Bully and Little Man. Photo by
Jeremy Daniel.

Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

Monday, October 9, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W41: Bloodshot

 10/03/23: Bloodshot
What: She NYC Arts presents a new play by Elinor T. Vanderburg, imaging a city where an epidemic has eradicated sleep. As citizens cope with unending days and nights, a new alarming pattern emerges when people begin to spontaneously combust.
And? This was truly special. A noir story, with a jazz quartet providing shrieking underscore throughout. The combination of Vanderburg's poetic yet understated script and and director Nigel Semaj's athletic and dramatic staging provides a truly memorable and haunting show, an exploration of the idea that the only rational response to the increasingly irrational world is self-implosion. The cast isn't always up to the level of Vanderburg's dialogue (excepting Ben Holbrook, the sonorous narrator, whose delivery is as poetic as the world of the play), but they all move exceptionally well, creating vivid stage pictures against Nor Marlow Smith's simple but versatile scenic design. The sound design currently needs a slightly better sound balance of body mics to the band (and accounting for when actors are yelling), but otherwise an exceptional piece of theater and commentary.



Monday, October 2, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W40: Death, Let Me Do My Show, Big Trip: Three Love Stories Near the Railroad

What: Rachel Bloom's new solo show where she contends with her greatest nemesis.
And? I don't really want to spoil this for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, but it was a good and interesting time, and very Rachel Bloom about it all. Like her tv series, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, it has the ethos that recovery is not a straight-line process, and everyone's journey is going to be its own unique mess.

Rachel Bloom. Photo by Emilio Madrid.

9/26/23: Big Trip 2: Three Love Stories Near the Railroad
What: La MaMa presents KRYMOV LAB NYC's dual exploration in Big Trip, which combines an adaptation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Three Love Stories Near the Railroad.
And? full review here

Foreground: Tim Eliot, Annie Hägg, Jeremy Radin, and Shelby Flannery.
Background: Kwesiu Jones and Erich Rausch. Photo by Steven Pisano.


Friday, September 29, 2023

Margin Notes: Big Trip: Three Love Stories Near the Railroad

Shelby Flannery and Tim Eliot. Photo by Steven Pisano.


Seen on: Tuesday, 9/26/23.

Plot and Background
La MaMa presents KRYMOV LAB NYC's dual exploration in Big Trip, which combines an adaptation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Three Love Stories Near the Railroad.

Three Love Stories adapts two Hemingway short stories ("Hills Like White Elephants" and "Canary for One") and a section of O'Neill's play Desire Under the Elms, presenting each vignette as a movement in a symphony (the audience is instructed not to clap between each). In "White Elephants" a couple struggles to talk around what they can't talk about and wonders if there is any love left. In "Canary" a woman tells two strangers about her estrangement from her daughter and the canary she is bringing home to try to bridge the gap. In "Desire" a woman must straddle the temperaments of her new husband and his grown son. Each is an examination of different kinds of love, and how that love can warp and change under duress.

[Note: I was originally scheduled to also see the other half of Big TripPushkin "Eugene Onegin" in our own words on Friday, September 29th. This performance was postponed due to the flooding in New York, and I am unable to make the postponed performance. I had hoped to talk about the two pieces in conversation, but instead will have to make do with discussing on Three Love Stories]

What I Knew Beforehand
Pretty much nothing. My favorite!

Thoughts:

Play: I often struggle with how to engage with theatrical work whose goal seems hostile to audience engagement. From the repeated discouragement of us clapping, to cast members literally kicking heavy props toward the front row, it's clear that Krymov Lab NYC does not want its audience to sit back and relax. And with threads of Brechtian style further alienating the audience from an emotional engagement, it does seem a curious choice that Three Love Stories chooses to explore three pieces that rely heavily on the unspoken anguish of each character's inner struggle below the surface. That being said, I was never bored, and the performances inspired me to track down the two Hemingway stories to see what the source material was like (I have an extreme aversion to O'Neill, so I left that script alone). The dilation of these concise and understated short stories into expansive and physical moments (a dancer in "White Elephants" seems to represent both the unborn fetus and the woman's suppressed libido; the collapse of the facade of the woman with the canary, as her makeup smears and her wig falls off) are quite stunningly effective theater, even if I don't always understand what it all adds up to. Maybe I don't need to understand.

Monday, September 25, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W39: Swing State, Merrily We Roll Along

 9/19/23: Swing State
What: Audible presents Rebecca Gilman's new play, about Peg, an aging widow looking after a prairie in Wisconsin in 2021, observing the collapsing ecosystem and wondering if it's worth fighting anymore.
And? In the earliest moment in the play, Peg is quietly mixing the dough for zucchini bread. Then she stops and poises her sharp knife first against her arm and then as if to drive it into her eye. When Ryan, a young man who does odd jobs for her, arrives moments later, she doesn't mention the incident. But she does show him her will. I don't want to dig too deeply into the rest of the plot here (spoilers) but I will say it was refreshing to see such a well-crafted piece of writing onstage again (it's been a dry summer). With a cast of only four (but omg, all of them truly excellent, especially Mary Beth Fisher in the main role), at first it seems like the kind of play where you can guess where it's going from moment one. But characters continue to surprise with moments that are both shocking and yet fully grounded in what we already know. And it's rather striking to see such a poignant exploration of despair that still manages, by the skin of its teeth, to find enough hope to keep on. Todd Rosenthal's scenic design is perfection, full of tiny details that make the space not a set but a home--from the abandoned dog toy near the food and water bowl, to the peeling contact paper lining the pantry shelves, this is a home that has been lived in and loved. Doing similarly beautiful work is Eric Southern's lighting design, gently sculpting the space with a scattering of table lamps stashed on bookcases, the light over the oven, wall sconces, and other subtle touches, making this house a beacon against the darkness of the prairie at night. It comes as less of a surprise to report such a solidly excellent cast and design when I see that the director is Robert Falls, of course.

An excellent, but difficult play. Pairing this with Jaja's African Hair Braiding last weekend, and I think the fall season of theater is off to a very good start for me.

Mary Beth Fisher and Bubba Weiler as Peg and Ryan. Photo by Liz Lauren.

What: The Broadway transfer of the NYTW run of Maria Friedman's production of the beloved Sondheim-Furth (flop) musical, about the friendship among three friends, traveling backward from the collapse of the friendship through to its idealistic beginnings.
And? I stand by what I said back in November. I think that by and large this is a solid, if not a definitive, production of Merrily, and it will be interesting to see if at long last Merrily can be a hit on Broadway (although bittersweet, with Furth, Prince, and Sondheim all dead). I don't hate the set design like some do, but I do feel that it limits the imagination of the director and restricts us to some less than creative staging. I think Gussie is still miscast (Gussie should be able to steal the scene with any of her lines; that's how she's written; that's what she does). What's funny to me is, casting of Gussie aside, I feel like most of my issues could be fixed if they would just let me in the room (oh, the arrogance). My issues are minor but: "Franklin Shepard Inc." should feel like someone cut the brake line, not like there's a chance to stop this debacle in action; some of the power in "Our Time" is lost when we don't see everyone else on their rooftops to see Sputnik (this is a staging limitation); the biggest offense to me: when Frank is noodling on the piano leading into "Growing Up" and acting like "oh this is a good melody I just came up with, let's keep composing go me" and it is CLEARLY the score for "Good Thing Going," which we'll hear in full in the next act. Come on, y'all. Major dramaturgical misstep, and one that wasn't there when this ran on the West End. What were they thinking?

But see? That stuff's fixable. Just listen to Zelda.

No, really, it's a solid production that mostly does right by a show I love. And it's the only production that has a promise of redemption for Frank, based on the framing device of Frank holding the script for "Take a Left." Maybe this time, he'll make the right choice.

Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, and Lindsay Mendez as Charley, Frank,
and Mary. Photo by Joan Marcus.


Monday, September 18, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W38: Jaja's African Hair Braiding

What: Manhattan Theatre Club presents Jocelyn Bioh's new play, a slice of life day at a hair braiding salon, where women compete and bond alternatively, all on the day of Jaja's green card wedding.
And? I loved it. Jocelyn Bioh is such a fine writer with a real sense of voice and humanity. At the performance I saw there was a sudden illness and so understudy Victoire Charles stepped in, script in hand to cover the role. She did amazing work, even balancing her script with prop business in a way that felt natural. The rest of the cast is similarly top-notch, from the emotional centers of Dominique Thorne (Marie) and Brittany Adebumola (Miriam), to the more comedic turns of Maechi Aharanwa (Ndidi) and Nana Mensah (Aminata), to the three actors doing triple duty as customers or walk-in vendors: Kalyne Coleman, Lakisha May, and Michael Oloyede. As the fish out of water new client Jennifer, Rachel Christopher brings a wide eyed sweetness, and cameoing as the titular Jaja in gorgeous wedding dress, Somi Kakoma has all the presence and charisma that makes it clear how she is able to run her salon and attract all these wonderful personalities to her. Bioh wrote this play as a love letter to the women of these salons: the hair braiders and the clients, and it's a stunning tribute to them; as directed by Whitney White, this cast feels like a true community. Also props to David Zinn's perfect salon scenic design.



Monday, September 11, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W37: The Creeps

 9/06/23: The Creeps
What: Catherine Waller's one person show about a seemingly disparate collection of characters, all trapped, but reaching out to the audience for help.
And? full review here

Catherine Waller as Lizardman.
Photo by Andrew Patino.


Friday, September 8, 2023

Margin Notes: The Creeps

Catherine Waller as Lizardman.
Photo by Andrew Patino


Seen on: Wednesday, 9/06/23.


Plot and Background
Following award-winning runs at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Hollywood Fringe Festival, and United Solo Festival, Catherine Waller's one person show is now running Off-Broadway. The Creeps, a one-person show created by and starring Catherine Waller, introduces the audience to a seemingly disparate collection of characters, all trapped, but reaching out to the audience for help.

What I Knew Beforehand
I knew that it was probably going to be unnerving, and that some sort of audience participation was involved (reader beware).




Thoughts:

With spidering limbs and a skeletal grin, the hunched over Lizardman (unnamed during the show, but so called in the script) welcomes the audience to the show, as sinister an emcee as Kander and Ebb ever saw. "Pay attention," he warns us, "coz the devil's in the details." We are in a nebulous space, eerily lit with far-echoing sounds. We could be in a basement. We could be in a cabaret. We could be in an abandoned hospital. After setting the ground rules--which include the warning that the audience is encouraged to talk--the Lizardman tours us to the various inhabitants of this space: Bill, the Cockney laborer, hunched over in the boiler room and mourning his daughter; Harley, an expectant mother and exotic dancer, high as a kite and murmuring to her fetus in a husky-honey voice; and Stumpy, an incorrigible child with hacked-off limbs who wants us to laugh at her jokes. The fifth character, the unseen Doctor, has a menacing whistle and a ready scalpel. The Doctor is why they're all here, but he's the last thing they want to talk about.

Monday, September 4, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W36: The Cottage

8/31/23: The Cottage
What: Jason Alexander directs a new play by Sandy Rustin, an old fashioned sex comedy with changing partners, cigarettes hidden pretty much everywhere on set, and inconsistent British accents.
And?  I don't think this play (or perhaps just this production) knew whether it wanted to be a genuine sex comedy, hearkening back to Noel Coward, or if it wanted to be a parody of the genre. It's poorly enough directed that 3/4 of the jokes aren't landing properly; and the audience, though eager to have a good time, stops finding as many reasons to laugh at the same joke over and over (the surprise cigarette locations continued to amuse but oof, I could smell all that smoke from the back of the theater while wearing a KN95 mask). At the very end it seems like maybe they wanted us to care about the main character after all, but it's a hard sell, considering that up to that point no one onstage seemed to be a real person, and the stakes, though stated, are non-existent in the performance. Still, it's nice to see Laura Bell Bundy back on the boards, leading a show with perfect timing and physicality. Understudy Tony Roach also acquits himself well as Beau (normally played by Eric McCormack). It might get an awards nod for the nostalgia of Paul Tate dePoo III's scenic design, which earns immediate admiration (oohs, ahhs, and applause) from the audience as the curtain rises.

Laura Bell Bundy as Sylvia. Photo by Joan Marcus.


Monday, August 28, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W35: Pay the Writer, A Will To Live

What: A new play by Tawni O'Dell about the decades-long friendship between a novelist and his literary agent, and I guess also about how the novelist was a bad husband and a bad father? I could tell you the plot beats but I couldn't actually tell you what this is about.
And? Ugh.

Marcia Cross, Bryan Batt, and Ron Canada as Lana, Bruston, and Cyrus.
Photo by Jeremy Daniel.



full review here

Masha King as Helena Weinrauch. Photo by David Zayas, Jr.


Margin Notes: A Will To Live

Masha King as Helene Weinrauch.
Photo by David Zayas, Jr.

Seen on: Saturday, 8/26/23.

Plot and Background
A one-woman play adaptation of Helena Weinrauch's memoir. She wrote her memoir while she was still recuperating in a Swedish hospital after surviving three concentration camps and a death march. Adapter (and Chain Artistic Director) Kirk Goskowski said of his work adapting Weinrauch's memoir that "Anything we left out was omitted for length and to make it a play. These are all her words. My only job here is to be the steward of her story."


What I Knew Beforehand
That it was adapted from a memoir of a Holocaust survivor. I'd also seen and reviewed several other Chain productions over the years.

Thoughts:

A young woman curls up on a clean white bed, wrapped in a blanket and robe, staring away from the audience, out at the peaceful seaside view of her hospital room in Sweden. She has survived years of torment so barbaric she doesn't remember it all at first. She doesn't remember the moment her body was discovered to be alive, rather than one of many corpses found by British soldiers. She doesn't remember being turned out from a German hospital for fear of typhoid. She doesn't remember the journey to Sweden. But the times before that, they start to come back. The sweet and innocent times before, living in Germany with her mother, father, and sister. Her sixteenth birthday, her piano lessons, helping her mother squirrel away jewelry in the event they would need it for bartering. And she remembers when the war started, and what came next. How her parents and sister were rounded up and disappeared, how she was hidden, given false identification papers. How she was recognized and tortured anyway. How she spent three years in three separate concentration camps--Plaszow, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen--how numerous small kindnesses or sheer luck saved her from sudden death even as she was rescued only twenty-four hours from a slower one.

This is the story she remembers. This is the story she tells.

Monday, August 21, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W34: Infinite Life

8/18/23: Infinite Life
What: Atlantic Theater Company, in conjuction with National Theatre, presents Annie Baker's newest play, about several patients staying at clinic specializing in water and juice fasts to treat chronic pain and illness. 
And? While this doesn't come close to John or The Antipodes, I still think an Annie Baker play is always worth seeing. She's so unlike anyone else, and her plays always seem to know exactly what they are, even if they at first appear to be about nothing. This is an interesting meditation on what it means to be in constant pain, and how to exist around the edges of that.



Monday, August 7, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W32: The Shark is Broken

What: The Broadway transfer of the Edinburgh Fringe/West End play about the making of Jaws, starring and cowritten by Ian Shaw (playing his father, Robert Shaw), along with Alex Brightman as Richard Dreyfuss and Colin Donnell as Roy Scheider. Over the course of the film shoot, the three actors use their downtime while waiting on a broken mechanical shark to bicker, to play games, and to share stories.
And? I feel a bit terrible for saying this, because Ian Shaw is clearly doing this in tribute to his father, who died only three years after Jaws came out, but this is such a mediocre paint-by-numbers play. Every few minutes we get another wink-wink line that the audience, who knows the future, gets to chuckle sensibly at ("No one will be talking about this movie in fifty years!" is one such hackneyed example). I'm amazed the actors don't turn to the audience and hold for laughter each time they say one. The content of each character's various revelations is about as in-depth as a Wikipedia article, the conflicts are half-baked, and there isn't actually much enlightenment thrown on the troubled set (the shark may be broken--a great title, for what it's worth--but we're not gonna deal with that much). I desperately craved some kind of transformative moment, or even a moment of joy baked into all the woes and carps of the business. Instead, we're stuck on the same static claustrophobic boat these three men are (scenic design Duncan Henderson), going nowhere slowly. Literalism in theater isn't always terrible, but it's also rarely necessary. Theater is where we can do metaphors, y'all. Theater is where Jessica Chastain's Nora can stand up from the chair she hasn't left for the past two hours, open the back door of the theater, and step out into Times Square. The final beat of The Shark is Broken is a great one, and well-earned, but it deserved a bit more underlining from the design. This was our moment to break the play, and we missed it.

Additionally, we need to talk about the challenge of having period characters (or in this case, representations of actual real-life people) spouting cruelties. I'm going to pre-empt the defense of "people are complicated, people say and do bad things, this is just realism." Sure they are, sure they do, and sure it is. But there is a difference between someone saying something cruel under the play's and audience's recognition that this isn't okay (think: anytime a white character in a piece of fiction uses the N word), and that same cruel utterance being met with chortling laughs. That's punching down, and that's the audience laughing at the punching down. That's the audience agreeing that it's okay to bodyshame people, because fat bodies don't deserve as much compassion as thin bodies with alcohol dependencies. That's the play saying this behavior is okay, and the audience's complicity in that same cruelty.

Listen, I don't like Richard Dreyfuss either. But most of the digs at him in this play (which, like Robert Shaw, very much does not like Richard Dreyfuss) center around his being fat and his being Jewish, either overtly or covertly. There are ways to frame personality conflicts that do not center two things over which someone has no control. But here it seems to be "we don't like Richard Dreyfuss because he's a fat Jew, and therefore it's okay to laugh at him over it." Even his character's accusation that Shaw's play The Man in the Glass Booth is antisemitic (I haven't read it but, going by the plot description and premise, it sounds like it is problematic at best) is met with derision, like he's another Jewish person looking to be offended. When Shaw bemoans that actors like him and Scheider are being replaced by neurotics, all I can hear are dog whistles.

There are ways to frame these conflicts. And then there's this. Where the audience laughs every time Shaw is abusive to Dreyfuss.

And that's not how I want to spend my energy.

Hell, the mediocre writing didn't even make me want to go rewatch Jaws, and it should have achieved that at the very least. Aaron Sorkin could have fixed this, when he was a good writer. But unless they call in a script doctor, stat, we're stuck with this. Did no one call it out during the West End run? Are there not enough Jewish people there to say "hey maybe not with the latent antisemitism threading through this whole thing?" I don't think I'm another Jewish person looking to be offended. I think I'm a Jewish person who is tired of having to explain why things are offensive in the first place.

Um. All three actors were good. But this is a bad play.

Colin Donnell, Ian Shaw, and Alex Brightman as Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw,
and Richard Dreyfuss. Photo by Matthew Murphy.


Monday, July 31, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W31: Malvolio, The Half-God of Rainfall

7/25/23: Malvolio
What: The Classic Theatre of Harlem presents Betty Shamieh's sequel to Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, starring Allen Gilmore reprising his wonderful rendition of Malvolio from this company's celebrated production of Twelfth Night.
And? I've been hyped to see this production since I saw Allen Gilmore's wonderful Malvolio back in February. But this play was a pretty big letdown. Too much about it didn't work for me: from the too-smirking allusions to other Shakespeare works to the beyond squicky age difference in the central romance, I did not enjoy the script. Craft-wise, Shamieh knows how to build a Shakespearean style collection of characters with odd interconnections (hearkening to the chaotic revelations in Cymbeline), but the story itself did not work for me, nor did the muddied storytelling of directors Ian Belknap and Ty Jones. The cast does the best with the material they have (Gilmore especially still manages to shine), but it's still a disappointing evening  (also feeding into my pet peeve this past season of a production claiming to be ninety minutes but actually running closer to two hours).

Allen Gilmore and Kineta Kunutu as Malvolio and Volina. Photo by Richard
Termine.


What: NYTW presents Inua Ellams's new epic poem, a blending of mythologies of Yoruba and Ancient Greece to tell the story of a demigod born of the sexual assault by Zeus of a beautiful Yoruba woman. After Demi becomes a basketball star and incurs Zeus's jealousy, the gods demand punishment. But it is Demi's mother Modúpé who journeys to Olympus for a final vengeance.
And? This is why I love theater. Pieces like this, that tell new stories, or old stories with new lenses. Stories of gods that still aim to overthrow colonialist bullshit, I am here for it. Stories of women not just surviving their assault, but drawing strength from each other, strength enough to bring down the monster who tried to steal their bodies from them. Just, it's so good. This cast is so good (Lizan Mitchell is having a moment, y'all, between this and her work at The Public recently), the staging and rhythm, the physical language created by Beatrice Capote. My one (tiny) complaint is that the floor, made of a black glittering sand, creates a (specifically to me) unpleasant aural sensation when the actors cross it. But maybe it's not as bad if you're not in the second row?

Mister Fitzgerald and Kelley Curran as Demi and Perseus.
Photo by Joan Marcus.


Monday, July 24, 2023

Weekly Margin 2023, W30: The Doctor

7/20/23: The Doctor
What: Park Avenue Armory hosts the North American premiere of Robert Icke's reimagined look at Arthur Schnitzler's 1912 play Professor Bernhardi. A Jewish doctor at a private institute prevents a Catholic priest from reading last rites over a dying teenager, a conflict that snowballs into disastrous consequences for the doctor and the institute. Robert Icke reimagines Schnitzler's study of antisemitism into a critique of identity politics as a whole.
And? I'm mostly going to be talking about the ideas and arguments of the play, so let me say up front, it's incredibly effective theater, which is always impressive with such a talky (well, shouty) play. The cast is all top-notch, and drummer Hannah Ledwidge keeps the air taut under every argument. 

The casting plays an interesting trick on the audience, one that isn't immediately clear: of the many identities represented in the text of the play (gender, ethnicity, trans), most of the characters are not played by actors who represent what seems to be their most "important" identity marker. So we watch Jewish Professor Wolff, as played by gentile Juliet Stevenson, argue with a Catholic priest (played by John Mackay, a white actor), not realizing until much later that the optics are not what we assumed: the priest is a Black man. We also note as the play goes on that some male characters are played by women, some white characters are played by people of color, etc. No one is whom we think they are, at least when it comes to visible identity markers. At first I was annoyed by what seemed a too-proud-of-its-edginess gimmick by another white director. But as Professor Wolff continues to defend her actions, insisting that she doesn't do "groups" (read: identity politics), it becomes clear that these identity inversions are meant to have us engage with the other characters through her lens, where these things shouldn't matter.

But, of course, they actually do matter. When the story leaks, her name is not released, but it is known that she is a Jewish woman (which means, in the characters' reality, she is visibly ethnically Jewish). When the story leaks, it matters that a Jewish woman physically barred a Black Catholic man from administering rites. It matters that her antagonistic colleague is a white Catholic man who offers her a trade of making the story go away if she chooses a Black Catholic male candidate over a white Jewish female candidate in an upcoming hiring, regardless of their actual competence. All of these identity markers become more important than the individuals themselves. In the social media maelstrom that follows the initial altercation, identities become the story much more than the actual case of a doctor trying to shield the final moments of a dying patient from additional distress.

Professor Wolff wants to treat people as individual but faceless personalities, out of context of their lived realities. This includes refusing to engage not only with her own Jewish identity (she is non-practicing, and considers herself the child of Jewish people, not a Jewish person herself), but also with her being the widow of partner whose Alzheimer's no doubt prompted the institute's focus on curing dementia. It's a noble, if misguided, goal--to treat people in a vacuum. But it doesn't work in the real world, where the careless use of the word "uppity" triggers generations of trauma for Black people's subjugation at the hands of white people.

For me, there are several problems with how the play is executing this argument. There are some false equivalencies (Dr. Hardiman accuses the institute of being a "closed shop" for not hiring enough Christians, ignoring the history of Christians shutting out other religions/identities from many spaces and insisting they find their own space ... then knocking on the door demanding to be let in there too; though this hypocrisy is not addressed in the play). There is never quite the proper reckoning for the antisemitic attacks on Dr. Wolff once her identity is published; as if, in putting her hand on a Black man's shoulder to restrain him, she had it coming to lose her license, the institute she founded, and to have her car defaced with a swastika and her cat murdered, its blood spread over the door. In the play, as in conversations today, there seems to be an effort to pit Black people against Jewish people (ignoring, as always, the existence of Jews of color), where we must rank sufferings and decide whose pain to care about, because it can't be both. So, you know, White Supremacy doing its thing. But again, the play doesn't reckon with this either. It also doesn't reckon with the problematic racial bias in much of modern medicine, which not only treats the white male body as the default (to the detriment of accurate and compassionate treatment of both female patients and patients of color), but also built so many of its advancements on the backs of non-consensual experimentation on Black bodies. Quite frankly, a responsible doctor cannot afford to "not see race," when it comes to properly treating their patients.

And, though by the end of the play, I understand the why of the casting choices for this production, I think beyond the trick of making us reframe the opening scene into something more troubling, it may be a mistake. Professor Wolff may not think these identities matter, but we all know that they do. There's a missing nuance, here: identities matter just as much as individual selves. I am a Jewish woman, but that is not the only part of me that matters, nor am I all Jewish women contained in a monolith. And because of the casting move here, I began to feel a lack of some level of authenticity. A character here is trans, but played by a cis actor. If there were another trans actor in the cast to balance this out (as there are Black actors playing white characters to balance out the white actors playing Black characters), that would be one thing, but instead it just feeds into the already problematic history of trans actors rarely getting to tell their own stories. Same, of course, for the current conversation about how rarely Jewish women are cast as Jewish heroes. I get what Icke is doing, but it feels a bit too smug in thumbing its nose at the conversations of representation and identity, a mocking look at arguments for authenticity. The characters who insist that identity markers, or "groups," matter are portrayed as almost a parody in their panel debate with Professor Wolff.

Juliet Stevenson and Juliet Garricks as Ruth Wolff and Charlie. Photo by
Stephanie Berger Photography.