Weekly Margin 2024, W16: Titanique, Water for Elephants, Here There Are Blueberries

 4/16/24: Titanique

What: A jukebox musical parody of the Titanic film.

And? Very campy fun.

Michael Williams, Nicole Parker, and Lindsay Heather Pearce as Jack,
Celine Dion, and Rose. Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade.

4/17/24: Water for Elephants

What: The Broadway musical adaptation of Sara Gruen's Depression-era novel about a young man who hops on a circus train to escape family tragedy and, you know, there's an elephant. I don't know, this show's least interesting aspect is its story.

And? I kept trying to figure out, while watching the show, why it wasn't quite working for me. It has a lot of elements I like: inherently theatrical storytelling, a deep bench of talent with the supporting players and ensemble, some striking music and harmonies, and a design team working well in concert with each other. And a lot of the time, this all works. The aerial ballet for the dying horse is heartbreaking and beautiful and a perfect demonstration of what this show is at its best. Sara Gettelfinger's triumphant Broadway return as the aging dancer Barbara is everything perfect, as is Paul Alexander Nolan's seedy turn as the ringmaster (the way he makes every note look effortless should be criminal, as should be his ability to steal nearly every show he's in). It's also a treat to see and hear Wade McCollum (Ernest Shackleton himself!) onstage again. And then the ensemble, which includes a number of alum from the Canadian acrobatic collective The 7 Fingers (Les 7 Doigts de la Main), is a stunningly united company repeatedly drawing gasps and applause from the audience (the co-choreographer and circus designer is Shana Carroll, co-founding artistic director of The 7 Fingers).

Okay, that all sounds great, so what's my problem? The story is kind of eh. The main character, though competently performed by Grant Gustin and Gregg Edelman, is perhaps the least interesting thing onstage. The solo songs aren't nearly as enjoyable as the group numbers. The puppets, though fine, made me long for the craft of Handspring Puppet Company (the group behind the puppetry in War Horse and Life &Times of Michael K, where the puppets were fully infused with breath and life, and I cared). And with all the acrobatics and circus activity, director Jessica Stone hasn't done enough to focus my eye: I didn't always know where to look.

tl;dr: the show is less than the sum of its parts, but some of its parts are extraordinary

The cast of Water for Elephants. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

Weekly Margin 2024, W15: Teeth

4/13/24: Teeth

What: Playwrights Horizons presents Anna K. Jacobs and Michael R. Jackson's new musical adaptation of Mitchell Lichtenstein's film, about a subject I'm worried will get my blog flagged (wheeeeeee).

And? This has great potential. The cast is fantastic, led by Alyse Alan Louis, who also costarred in Jackson's White Girl in Danger at Second Stage. The songs are catchy, though I think they need a few steps further to elevate them to their full potential (a few songs have a chorus that's show-stopping hilarity when it first hits, but doesn't push the joke further so the laughter dies out as the song goes on). However, I don't think the show currently has the right director. I've seen Sarah Benson's exceptional directing work at at TFANA with both Fairview and An Octoroon, but right now the performance isn't matching the degree of camp that the script wants to deliver. I also don't think it's currently staged that effectively. I look forward to seeing this show continue to develop, and become what it is surely destined to be. (and if the subject matter--revenge predicated on sexual assault--isn't for me, that doesn't invalidate that it's a worthy show that should be seen)

Jenna Rose Husli, Wren Rivera, Alyse Alan Louis, Phoenix Best, and Helen
J. Shen as Trisha, Stephanie, Dawn, Fiona, and Keke. Photo by Chelcie Parry.

Weekly Margin 2024, W14: Patriots

4/06/24: Patriots

What: The Broadway transfer of Peter Morgan's play about Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky, who first helped Putin's ascent to power and then became one of his most vocal critics.

And? The play is bookended by Berezovsky telling us how the West doesn't understand Russia, doesn't understand its soul. This is probably true. However, I don't know that the play itself (written, after all, by a Westerner, the bulk of whose works have centered on British politics and monarchy) does much to elucidate. The whole play still feels very much like a Western lens. It also doesn't manage to shed much light on the enigma of Putin himself, who seems a timid nobody until he takes control of Russian government and never lets go. He remains a cypher. 

But. What if we say this is deliberate. What if we admit the Western lens of this play and say that's a choice, that Morgan isn't trying to write from within the Russian mentality. Why, then, this play? Why now? I found myself for most of the performance trying to discern what story the play was telling. But if we ask that question with the acknowledgement of the deliberately Western lens, maybe this play is a warning to us, to not be complacent. Putin took power during Russia's brief era of freedom from its totalitarian communist rule. Democracy on its own doesn't protect itself as remaining a democracy, not when people act in bad faith to tip the balance. Britain and the US are not free from the risk of fascism, and we know damn well that there are people who would like the next election to be the last election. They're saying it openly at this point.

So while I can't necessarily say this is a great piece of theater that will stick with me, competently done though it is, I can see why they want to tell this story now. Michael Stuhlbarg is wonderful and eccentric and elastic as Berezovsky (and continues to make me regret having missed his performance in "The Pillowman") and will probably get a Tony nomination.

A scene from the Almeida Theatre production. Photo by Marc Brenner.

Weekly Margin 2024, W12: The Ally, The Who's Tommy, Lempicka, The Motive and the Cue

3/19/24: The Ally

What: The Public Theater presents Itamar Moses's new play, about Asaf, a progressive Jewish playwright in a college town who finds himself embroiled in a delicate and contentious campus conflict when he's asked to add his name to a manifesto that--in criticizing the institutional violence against Black people in America--sees fit to criticize Israel as well. Important to note: the play takes place in September and early October of 2023, just before the pogrom on October 7th. It was also written years ago and intended to be presented at The Public, before Covid shutdowns delayed it until now; it has seen some revisions in light of current events.

And? Oskar Eustis's program note articulates that the intention of the play is to dive into these difficult questions without providing an answer, and without designating one voice as the author's proxy. It asks the audience to take the space to listen, to bring empathy to hearing different voices than their own.

It's good to make the space for this discussion, in a landscape where people stop to listen before speaking. For me, however, the play doesn't truly get past the various different talking points I've already read and heard, and the characters themselves aren't fully sketched beyond being the different mouthpieces for those talking points (Reuven, the most ardent defender of the existence of Israel, exists for one scene only and then is neatly packed away in his mouthpiece box. I got the quiet feeling that if he'd gotten any more time, they would have accused the play of being too imbalanced, even though most of the characters are anti-Israel). But maybe this play isn't for me. Maybe it's for that person in the back row the night I went, the person who clapped every time a character spoke one of the dog whistle talking points: those phrases that sound like criticism of Israel but are actually invoking centuries-old tropes and propaganda. (I hate that I have to do this because it should be obvious, but much like the protagonist Asaf, I know I need to reiterate that criticism of Israel's government is valid and necessary; there's a difference between that and a lot of what's being said right now) So maybe this play is for that person clapping, who's heard only their own talking points; maybe it's to break them out of that bubble and work towards empathy. But I can't say I have high hopes that she heard anything she didn't feel like hearing.

Hanging over all of the proceedings, like a Greek tragedy, is the audience's certain knowledge of the tragedy that is only days away. What we see are the tensions ready to explode, just waiting for their object to do so. I wonder what the sequel to this play might look like.

Zooming in a bit, underscoring Asaf's on-campus challenges are his struggles to satisfy his wife, struggles which mirror his struggles as a progressive Jew in America: at once he's both given up too much to move across the country for her job, while also not compromising his ethics enough to support her; she didn't know he felt so strongly about Israel, but also how could he then back down from his stance? Part of their conflict necessitates the unpacking of why a past relationship of his fell apart, one where he could never seem to find safe ground. Where is the path to being the perfect partner? Where is the path to being the perfect Jew, one who satisfies all their liberal friends by being the right kind of ally and not calling out imbedded antisemitism if it detracts from the larger cause (there's always a larger cause)? How are any of us ever enough to deserve to be treated like our pain matters too?

Josh Radnor, Madeline Weinstein, Cherise Boothe, and Michael Khalid
Karadsheh as Asaf, Rachel, Nakia, and Farid. Photo by Joan Marcus.

3/20/24: The Who's Tommy

What: The Broadway revival of the musical about that pinball wizard. (okay, it's about a young boy who witnesses a scene of intense violence and retreats so far into himself that he spends the next twenty years unseeing, unhearing, and not speaking)

And? Des McAnuff, who cowrote the book and won a Tony award for directing the original production, returns to direct this revival. By and large, I think it's a great time. The absolute perfection of David Korins's skeletal scenic design with Amanda Zieve's lighting and Peter Nigrini's projection design work in perfect concert to sculpt this real and unreal space, where walls are imagined and perspectives are constantly shifting, telescoping in and out, then sliding away. The movement as crafted by McAnuff and choreographed by Lorin Latarro is kinetic and relentless. 

My big complaint though is the costume design: I have no idea what story Sarafina Bush is telling. Though the color palate--pulling the neon yellow from the scenic and projection designs to show a sort of poisoning of the space--is effective against the grey scale, a lot of the other costume work feels a bit cartoonish. And I don't know why there are armbands everywhere (gonna hold McAnuff responsible for this too) -- why is fascism a theme in the show now? I thought the show was about the difficulties of processing intense trauma (especially in a family that wants to suppress the bad feelings), and then the dangers of celebrity worship (and a bit of a failed Christ story, a la Pippin). But now there's fascism too, and a longer jump to the future than I remember being in the show prior. I don't get it. It doesn't help that, with the cuts to the second act, that whole second arc feels rushed and a bit unearned.

An interesting new aspect of the staging now is that Tommy is very clearly coded as autistic. At first I was concerned the production was implying that the trauma somehow caused it, but then I realized: in this version Tommy was always autistic: after witnessing the horrible violence and then being instructed by his parents that he didn't hear it, didn't see it, and would never speak of it, the traumatized child took them at their word, and self-induced these psychosomatic disabilities. So um. It's not perfect, and it's not exactly good science, but I don't think Tommy has ever bothered itself about good science. It's a fairy tale.

The preview night we went, two of the principal actors--Adam Jacobs and Christina Sajous--were struck down with a sudden illness; the producers had canceled that day's matinee to let the covers rehearse the show. So we got to see David Paul Kidder's and Afra Hines's debut performances in the roles of Captain Walker and Acid Queen, and if we hadn't been told that, we wouldn't have known. Just, god I love live theater. I love how everyone in the audience cheered loudly, both at those actors' first appearances but also at the curtain call. We were all there celebrating that things go wrong, but theater people figure out how to cope.

Ali Louis Bourzgui as Tommy and the company of The Who's Tommy.
Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.

Weekly Margin 2024, W11: Sweeney Todd, My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion

3/14/24: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

A repeat visit to see the new cast. Joe Locke as Toby puts the accent work of the rest of the cast to embarrassing shame. Sutton Foster brings a similar energy to the role as Annaleigh Ashford, though she's still putting her Sutton spin on it. Aaron Tveit is better than expected (he's certainly doing better with the acting beats and matching the music than Groban did; his dancing background surfacing), but the role still feels like a bad fit for him: not just character tone but also vocal range. He can hit the notes but that's all he's doing--so that when he hits the high notes and you get a sudden zing all up your spine, you remember that oh, yes, he's a tenor and he really can sound that good all the time, if only he was singing a tenor role. (the zing was super zingy on "Nor a HUNDRED CAN ASSAUGE ME")

3/16/24: I was supposed to see Sleep No More, but they've been cancelling performances for the past few days without an official explanation (rumors abound online).

Streaming Theater-Related Content I Watched

• Wilma Theater's My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion.

Weekly Margin 2024, W10: Flight Risk, The Hunt

3/07/24: Flight Risk

What: Dakota Silvey's new play about three people stranded in the forests of Alaska after their prop plane crashes.

And? full review here

Grace Sallee and Conor Andrew Hall as Andi and Clark. Photo sourced from
Press Kit.

3/09/24: The Hunt

What: St. Ann's Warehouse hosts The Almeida Theatre's play adaptation of the 2012 Danish film about a schoolteacher falsely accused of molesting a young student.

And? Theatrically speaking, I think it's a terrific piece of work, and Tobias Menzies in the lead role manages to deftly balance a man who vigilantly guards his emotions and yet feels and thinks so much. The staging and choral work is powerful and disturbing. I think I just feel conflicted about the subject matter itself. While it is true that children will make up horrible stories without realizing the damage they can do, I worry when the majority of fictionalized stories I see about someone being accused of assault are a false accusation. It contributes to the sense that the majority of these are false and can bring a good man down, and makes it easier to discredit and discount the stories of actual victims and survivors of abuse and assault. I think when society gets to a place where the instinct is not to accuse a woman of being vidictive and fame-hungry, trying to ruin a man's life--as opposed to acknowledging that her life has been ruined and he needs to face consequences--then maybe this story should be told, as a cautionary. But not when the norm is still to believe the man, always the man, before the woman.

I dunno. It's messy. It's good theater but it's a messy thing to wade into.

The cast of The Hunt. Photo by Teddy Wolff.

Margin Notes: Flight Risk

Flight Risk

Grace Sallee as Andi. Photo source: press kit.

Seen on: Thursday, 3/07/24.

Plot and Background

A Collective presents a brief run of Dakota Silvey's debut play, Flight Risk, expanded into a full-length play after it won the Gene Frankel Theatre Fifteen Minutes of Fame One-Act Festival. Flight Risk follows midwife Andi, pilot Cooper, and a stranger named Clark in the forests of Alaska after their prop plane crashes.

Thoughts:

Play: This has the makings of a good play: high stakes, three characters at cross purposes with each other, and a series of secrets and revelations to be uncovered. However it also builds itself a few roadblocks that prevent it from fully landing. Perhaps the biggest one for me is the playwright's belief that a psychopath is dramatically interesting by dint of his unpredictability and unknowable nature. Unfortunately, once it's been made clear Clark is a psychopath who lies as easily as he breathes, it gets boring for me, and it just becomes a waiting game to see if he will kill the others or be killed by them. Likewise, the characters of Cooper and Andi are so desperate for the other to not learn their respective secrets--yet share them readily with Clark--and then when all is revealed, not that much seems to have changed. I don't know that the stakes, though high on paper, are ever fully actuated in the performance in a way that convinces me that this matters, or that anyone surviving this crash will be profoundly changed by what they experience in this endless twilight purgatory.

Weekly Margin 2024, W9: Merrily We Roll Along

3/1/24: Merrily We Roll Along

a repeat visit

Weekly Margin 2024, W8: The Moonshot Tape & A Poster of the Cosmos, Jelly's Last Jam

2/23/24: The Moonshot Tape & A Poster of the Cosmos

What: For one week only, Deep Flight Products presents two monologue one acts by Lanford Wilson.

And? full review here

2/24/24: Jelly's Last Jam

What: NY City Center Encores! series presents George C. Wolfe and Susan Birkenhead's biomusical about Jelly Roll Morton (a man who claims to have invented Jazz but is at least responsible for helping to annotate it).

And? I like its unusual framing, so it doesn't feel like a cookie cutter story: a retrospective look back at his life now that he's passed on, as hosted by the Chimney Man, where Jelly himself is revealed to be an unreliable narrator. The musical numbers are fun, especially the dance sequences, and it's such a remarkable coup to have the three women who originated the Greek chorus of the Hunnies--Mamie Duncan-Gibbs, Stephanie Pope Lofgren, and Allison M. Williams--return to reprise their roles. While I don't think the show will stick to my ribs, I'm still glad I saw it.

Allison M. Williams, Stephanie Pope Lofgren, and Mamie Duncan-Gibbs
as the Hunnies. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Margin Notes: The Moonshot Tape & A Poster of The Cosmos

The Moonshot Tape

&

A Poster of The Cosmos

Seen on: Friday, 2/23/24.

Plot and Background

Deep Flight Productions present a pair of monologue one acts by Lanford Wilson for one week only at The Flea. Both plays concern a character answering questions from an unseen person. In A Poster of The Cosmos, Tom curls over a takeout coffee in a precinct interrogation room after the death of his lover; in The Moonshot Tape, Diane grants an interview to a student in her hometown while staying in a rundown motel near her mother's nursing home.

What I Knew Beforehand

I had read both plays, years ago, in the collection of 21 one acts by Lanford Wilson, but I didn't remember most of the content. But I know and love the work and voice of Lanford Wilson, and I was very excited to get to see some of his work performed.

Thoughts:

At the end of Cosmos, Tom asks if the police are happy now that he's finished telling the terrible story of his lover's death from AIDS, and his attempt to cope with that moment. At the end of Moonshot, Diane offers her interviewer a drink, to help digest her story of sexual abuse and revenge. But the question they're really asking is "Do you regret asking me to tell you the truth?" Because the thing about knowing the truth is, you can never unknow it. This horrible thing that has been living inside Tom, inside Diane, has spread to live inside their interrogators, has spread to live inside us.

Weekly Margin 2024, W7: Public Obscenities, The Seven Year Disappear, Prayer for the French Republic

2/13/24: Public Obscenities

What: TFANA hosts Soho Rep and NAATCO National Partnership Project's production of Shayok Misha Chowdhury's play about Choton, a queer studies PhD student who, with his boyfriend, travels to his family home in Kolkata, India to research the queer Bengal community in the wake of the repeal of anti-sodomy and anti-homosexual laws.

And? I loved it. This is the rare play that lets itself breathe (yes, it's a little over three hours but it's worth it), that lets its characters exist in both the quiet and noisy ends of the spectrums of memory, introspection, loneliness, and the urge for connection. A major motif in the play is the power and permanence of photographs: not only the large and gloomy photograph of Choton's grandfather, who stands guard over the house, but the recently-discovered and revealing photographs taken just days before his death. Once a person dies, there will never be any more new photos taken of them; this is all we get. But there's power in the discovery of photos unknown, showing a side long hidden. And these photographs, these films, these voice memos, these attempts by Choton and Raheem to document the ephemeral, they give us something, but they also never quite capture all we remember of the moment--including, perhaps especially, the one documenting them: the one behind the camera. This play is such a gift; I'm glad I didn't miss it.

Abra Haque, Debashis Roy Chowdhury, and Jakeem Dante Powell as Choton,
Pishe, and Raheem. Photo by Hollis King.

2/15/24: The Seven Year Disappear

What: The New Group presents a new play by Jordan Seavey: a two-hander metatheatrical nonlinear look at a complicated mother-son relationship and the damage caused when the experimental artist mother disappears for seven years on the brink of her MoMA commission.

And? A really interesting line of tension in the voyeuristic excavation of Naphtali's trauma after his abandonment at the hands of his mother and business partner. I think, even at the end, I don't forgive her; I don't think we're meant to. It's too little too late, and in having Cynthia Nixon's character play everyone else her son meets, even if she thinks she's atoning, it's still all about her. But yeah, it's very good multimedia theater.

Weekly Margin 2024, W5: Hamlet

2/04/24: Hamlet

What: Eddie Izzard performs a one person Hamlet, as adapted by Mark Izzard.

And? She's always an engaging performer, as we all know, and there are some very powerful moments of discovery, when she lets herself breathe into a moment. I think overall this would be a confusing production to follow for anyone not already familiar with the characters and story (the sword fight at the end is, well, a lot of jumping around), but it's worth seeing for fans of Suzy Izzard.

Weekly Margin 2024, W4: Pride House, Harmony, Our Class, Once Upon a Mattress, Dear England

1/24/24: Pride House

What: TOSOS presents Chris Weikels' new play, about Beatrice Farrar's collection of friends at Fire Island during the summer of 1938, right before a hurricane hits.

And? full review here.

Jake Mendes, Patrick Porter, Jamie Heinlein, Alex Herrera, Aaron Kaplan,
and Tom Souhrada as Stephen, Thomas Farrar, Beatrice Farrar, Brad, John
Mosher, and Arthur Brill. Photo by Richard Rivera.

1/25/24: Harmony

What: The Broadway transfer of Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman's musical about real life music group The Comedian Harmonists, performing amid the rise of fascism in 1930s Berlin.

And? It's better than it was downtown. They trimmed a lot of the excess (though I'm astonished Chip Zien let them cut his Marlene drag number). It's still not a great show, but it's a better show than it was. And like Pride House, it's attempting to bring new attention to a piece of culture that larger society tried to erase from memory. I do wish Zien had more colors in his paint box. Every time he wants to emphasize something or intensify the emotion, he yells/belts. Quiet intensity is also potent, when used. It is nice to see the six young men who originated the roles of the singing troupe downtown return with the show to make their Broadway debuts (except Zal Owen, who has one prior Bway credit), and Sierra Boggess and Julie Benko are great in somewhat thankless parts. 

And, well. I wish some of the subject matter didn't feel so bitterly current as it does, but here we are.

Blake Roman, Steven Telsey, Zal Owen, Danny Kornfeld, Eric Peters, and
Sean Bell as Chopin, Lesh, Harry, Young Rabbi, Erich, and Bobby.
Photo by Julieta Cervantes/Adam Riemer.

Margin Notes: Pride House

Pride House

Seen on: Wednesday, 1/24/24.

Gail Dennison, Jamie Heinlein, Calvin Knegten, and Raquel
Sciacca as Irene Gerard, Beatrice Farrar, Hugo Franc, and
Maxine Franc. Photo by Richard Rivera.

Plot and Background

The Other Side of Silence presents a world premiere of Chris Weikel's new play about Beatrice Farrar and her friends in Cherry Grove, Fire Island, right before the 1938 hurricane that devastated the vacation homes there and led to a fundamental shift in the demographic of vacationers on the island. Beatrice Farrar, her cottage Pride House, and her friends are among the barely-remembered but worth-retrieving pockets of Queer history, and nearly all the characters in this play are real people who were there in her house during the storm.

What I Knew Beforehand

Very nearly nothing, except that it took place on Fire Island before a hurricane.

Thoughts:

The walls of Pride House--so named for Beatrice Farrar's love of Jane Austen, but also granting the audience a knowing nod toward the future of Cherry Grove's population--are painted as a mural: a beautiful endless horizon of a gentle wave cresting toward a sandy shore, with benign puffs of white cloud overhead. They match the back wall of Evan Frank's evocative and poetic scenic design, the "actual" outdoors, as if there is no barrier between the island paradise outside and the haven inside. The glassless windows perched on slender frames--no actual protection from the outside--reinforce this impression. When the first act closes amid the rising storm, the sounds of a tree falling and window glass shattering pierce the air. But the glass was never there. The protection was never there, and we have been always outside and exposed, waiting for a storm to rip everything away.

Weekly Margin 2024, W3: The Connector

1/16/23: The Connector

What: MCC presents a new Jason Robert Brown musical with book by Jonathan Marc Sherman, about a monthly news journal with a fifty year legacy of accurate and compelling stories. When a young journalist who idolizes the magazine joins and quickly advances to stardom, questions of truth, integrity, and long-held biases come under focus.

And? It's still in previews, so I want to grain-of-salt this, but at the performance I saw the first third of the musical felt like the cast was encountering Sherman's script for the first time: stiff, stilted pauses and a complete lack of momentum to every book scene (the script itself failed to sparkle here as well). The end third is much stronger: tightly done, with tension and stakes. So hopefully the first third can catch up to this. Right now Sherman's script under Daisy Prince's direction feels unfocused. It's unclear who our main character is, and it's ultimately unclear why Dobson does what he does.

Still, there are things worth our time here. Jason Robert Brown has a particular knack for piercing emotional storytelling over the course of a song, and he gives some beautiful gifts to the cast in that way. The song where Dobson works his way through to find the perfect structure of an opening sentence is a beautiful study of what it is to be a writer. And the editor's admonishment, "Truth isn't just what you say it is," feels particularly relevant in this era of misinformation. And the show hits on the question of which is the more damaging block to marginalized voices being heard: the casually dismissive cruelty, or the genial myopia and latent misogyny and racism? (answer: both. it's both.)

Also, and this is for my sister: there's an entire song about Scrabble.

Weekly Margin 2024, W2: Back To The Future: The Musical, Appropriate

1/10/23: Back To the Future: The Musical

What: Exactly what it says on the tin.

And? It's like an AI tried to write a musical and then gave up. Most of the songs are incoherent (not only from an "I can't understand the lyrics because they're drowned out by the orchestra" perspective but also from an "Is this a song? Is this the same song? Did the last song end or do they not end until we hit a choreographic button? What is this? Why does Marty keep repeating the last sentence spoken to him in an angsty belt? Does someone think that's a song hook? Why are we here?" perspective). I don't think there are any actual characters up on stage. There are so many moments that have the shape of jokes without actually being jokes (or being, you know, funny). The jokes that are there are mostly from the original screenplay, and the production somehow manages to either misunderstand them or overplay them. Some of the car stuff is cool. The dancing is good. The act one finale song, "Something About That Boy," is the only good new song in the whole score: it's competent pastiche, it actually functions like a song, and more importantly it functions like a musical theater song: story moves forward, we've got ironic juxtaposition, humor. It didn't feel like an act one finale, but I guess we can't have everything. But major MAJOR snaps to Biff understudy Marc Heitzman, who stepped into the role in the middle of act one, with no chance for a fight call, and dove into the complicated dance and fight choreo of the act one finale. That's some good Broadway.

Roger Bart, Casey Likes, and the Delorean as Doc Brown, Marty McFly,
and the Delorean. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.

1/11/23: Appropriate

What: 2nd Stage presents playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's much-anticipated Broadway debut. Appropriate had its first New York run in 2014 at Signature with a different cast and production team. Three adult siblings and their families gather at their recently deceased father's decrepit Arkansas plantation to manage the estate sale and unearth some alarming relics, as well as old grudges.

And? A consummate production. The structure and unfolding ugly truths are perfectly built, the dialog is sharp and bitter, the cast is expertly directed by Lila Neugebauer, and the sound design by Bray Poor and Will Pickens is especially powerful and foreboding. And the audience is led on a delicate tightrope of empathizing with a character before getting knocked to the nets below, on the reminder that everyone here is one kind of monster or another.

Michael Esper, Elle Fanning, Natalie Gold, Alyssa Emily Marvin, Corey
Stoll, and Sarah Paulson as Franz, River, Rachael, Cassidy, Bo, and Toni.
Photo by Joan Marcus.

Weekly Margin 2024, W1: Mind Mangler, Fat Ham

1/05/23: Mind Mangler

What: From the folk behind The Play That Goes Wrong (Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields), a two-hander (starring Lewis and Sayer), about a mentalist's show going wrong.

And? Delightful. A nice start to the new year.

Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

• Wilma Theater's stream of their stage production of Fat Ham.