11/22/24: McNeal
What: Lincoln Center presents a new play by Ayad Akhtar about a celebrated writer grappling with the rise of AI and the corruption of his own integrity as a writer.
And? I haven't read the reviews but the vibes I'd picked up led me to believe I'd either be bored or disdainful of this production. So maybe with those managed expectations, I had a better time than expected? It's an interesting and complex character study of someone I'd never want to meet in real life: someone who goes from borrowing liberally from other people's real-life stories, to borrowing liberally from an unpublished manuscript, and finally to asking AI to borrow liberally on his behalf and say it's his. If you ask me why a man who would do this is so openly critical of AI, calling it the end of true creative works, I point you to his rampant self-loathing and self-destructive tendencies. Design-wise, I still haven't figured out what story the scenic design is telling, nor fully have I figured out some of the elements of the staging (I was telling myself a different story than the one the play ultimately told), but the lighting design is a clever and sneaky lens to what is going on in the show. Ultimately we're left with an unresolved ambiguity. Sometimes that makes for satisfying theater, something you can go out into the night debating (see: this season's Job); here, it felt like maybe the show itself didn't know the answer and was hoping we might help.
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| Robert Downey Jr. and Brittany Bellizeare as Jacob McNeal and Natasha Brathwaite. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman. |
11/23/24: Ruddigore
What: NYGASP presents the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta about the Bad Baronet.
And? An absolute delight. This production has a lot of their stalwart regulars in the principal roles, and they are each of them in wonderful voice with good comic delivery. The score for Ruddigore is full of great songs, and it's a real treat to hear them sung so well.
11/23/24: Left on Tenth
What: Delia Ephron's play based on her memoir.
And? A very good case of a show that isn't for me, but is for someone else. The woman next to me was having a full emotional journey with the show. For me, it was fine but nowhere near a must-see. Serviceable, but not making any design or staging choices that I found particularly interesting enough to elevate beyond the play itself. The romance stuff is well-done, the two leads very charming. The narration is overused and poorly delivered.
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| Peter Francis James, Peter Gallagher, Julianna Margulies, and Kate MacCluggage as Featured Actor, Peter, Delia, and Featured Actress. Photo by Joan Marcus. |
11/24/24: Gatz
What: Elevator Repair Service brings back their celebrated adaption of The Great Gatsby (the entire text presented onstage over the course of 8 hours (including a 90 minute dinner break).
And? I feel so lucky they brought this back to New York one last time so I could finally see it. There is a special kind of energy to be part of an audience who has given over any anxiety about time and is here for the day, to be taken on a journey. I'm thinking as I write this of other days in which I spent most of my time inside one theatrical story: all of The Norman Conquests in one day, The Inheritance, pre-lockdown Cursed Child. Here we knew the show would start at 2pm, that there would be three breaks (two regular intermissions, one dinner break), and beyond that we were all here for the journey. And it's a journey that creeps up on you. A man enters a run-down office full of file boxes and 70s-era wall paneling; he sits at an old boxy computer that doesn't want to turn out, and then pulls out a book and starts reading. At first office life continues around him but then, gradually, they take on the roles and tell the story together. The line between office characters and Gatsby characters are as blurry as Nick's memory of the parties he attends that summer. I don't know that what I described actually conveys the hypnotic sense of the production, but it's very effective theater.
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| Scott Shepherd, center, as Nick, with the cast of Gatz. Photo by Joan Marcus. |
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