Weekly Margin 2025, W7: Grangeville, Maiden Mother Crone

2/11/25: Grangeville

What: Signature presents Samuel D. Hunter's new two-hander about half-brothers, estranged both emotionally and physically, seeing if they can reconnect across all the hurt as they discuss their mother's end of life care.

And? It doesn't touch A Case for the Existence of God for me, which I adored, but it's still well-done and very well performed, especially by Paul Sparks in the showier role.

2/13/25: Maiden Mother Crone

What: The Pete at The Flea hosts two solo plays, Sugarcoated by Jen Ponton and The Longer My Mother Is Dead The More I Like Her by Deborah Unger.

And? full review here.

Margin Notes: Maiden Mother Crone

Maiden Mother Crone: a duet of solo plays

Seen on: Thursday, 2/13/25.

Plot and Background

The Pete at The Flea hosts two solo plays, Sugarcoated by Jen Ponton and The Longer My Mother Is Dead The More I Like Her by Deborah Unger. Both pieces are memoir pieces: Sugarcoated, tracking Ponton's journey toward sexual actualization while navigating a fatphobic and heteronormative world; The Longer My Mother navigating Unger's complicated relationship with her recalcitrant mother.

What I Knew Beforehand

A pair of solo plays confronting feminine archetypes.

Thoughts:

There's an unspoken contract between audience and performer/author when it comes to autobiographical solo shows: there will be trauma, and it will be processed. In Ponton's case, it's a series of men--starting with her own father--who refuse to see her worth and whose cruelty trigger a series of dissociations from her own body. With Unger, it comes in the form of a mother's refusal to communicate with or understand her child.

What's surprising in both cases, then, is the joy both performers are able to find within these harsh narratives. Ponton, who starts the show with the unfiltered joy of her seven-year-old self awash on her face, sitting in front of a beautifully frosted pink birthday cake, keeps seeking joy in every age and stage of her journey. Yes, that means her gleaming eyes and cheeks often crumple under new heartbreaks, but somehow we know that her spirit won't be permanently squashed, even if the journey to liberation takes longer than she would like.

Weekly Margin 2025, W6: Liberation, Still, Urinetown

2/04/25: Liberation

What: Roundabout presents Bess Wohl's new play, a twist on a memory play, revisiting the time in the 1970s when her mother was part of the women's liberation movement.

And? It's quite a thing, to write a memory play about a time you don't remember. But that becomes part of the play, as Bess, played with marvelous depth by Susannah Flood, becomes her mother through the memories she's had to reconstruct through interviewing the surviving members of the group. Her purpose: unpack what they did back then, to help her answer the question of why here in 2025 we are still fighting the exact same fight (a throwaway line about "we got Roe v. Wade" lands especially bitterly in today's environment). But even as she pursues this question, it becomes clear it's still the wrong question--it's not why they "failed," but why this world is still so resistant to universal freedoms across not just gender but race and ethnicity, sexuality, and other barriers from being the "default" position of a wealthy straight white able-bodied man in the United States. The play itself is unable to answer that question, but perhaps the intended message is not that these women were all archetypes, but that they were all people, complicated and flawed, and that they did fight, and advocate. And it's what we can do, too.

2/05/25: Still

What: Lila Romeo's two-hander about a successful writer and a successful lawyer reuniting after many years and a terrible breakup, only to realize the barriers between them have only grown.

And? Meh. Nothing in here was interesting to me.

Mark Moses and Melissa Gilbert as Mark and Helen. Photo by Maria Baranova.

2/06/25: Urinetown

What: NY City Center Encores! series presents Hollmann and Kotis's satirical musical about a town where it's "a privilege to pee."

And? Urinetown's always a fun night out at the theater for me. The cast here is pretty strong. Especially of note: Christopher Fitzgerald, stealing moments as Officer Barrel with his off-the-wall delivery, Rainn Wilson's surprisingly good turn as Caldwell B. Cladwell (his bio says he's never sung in front of people before), and the fantastic Tiffany Mann, stepping in to cover Penelope Pennywise the night we saw.

Kevin Cahoon, Stephanie Styles, Keala Settle, Myra Lucretia Taylor,
Pearl Scarlett Gold, and Graham Rowat as Hot Blades Harry, Hope Cladwell,
Penelope Pennywise, Josephine Strong, Little Sally, and Five-Times Johnny.
Photo by Joan Marcus.

Weekly Margin 2025, W4: The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [redux], Blind Runner

1/21/25: The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [redux]

What: NYTW in association with Lucille Lortel Theatre, hosts a revival production of A Sinking Ship and Theater in Quarantine's The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy, originally presented live online in 2020. Based on a short story by Stanislaw Lem, it follows Egon Tichy, alone on a spacecraft, perpetually throwing himself into a vortex to time travel to an earlier version of himself, in order to perform a mechanical fix that requires two people. Chaos ensues as it seems arrogant curmudgeon Egon Tichy can't even get along with himself.

And? This was a goddamn delight. Although I saw a lot of TiQ's work in 2020, I somehow missed this one, and it's a real treat to see him do it in real time, and see how he achieves the various special effects, all within the small white box that is TiQ's performance space. As I texted a friend on my way home after the show, "Josh Gelb is an evil genius." Her reply? "He always has been." First show of the year to earn a guaranteed spot on my end of year Best Of theater list.

Joshua William Gelb as Egon Tichy. Photo source.

1/23/25: Blind Runner

What: St. Ann's Warehouse presents Mehr Theatre Group's production of Amir Reza Koohestani's play about an Iranian distance runner whose wife, a political prisoner, convinces him to help a bilnd woman run a marathon, and from there, make their own political protest.

And? The design and vision of the piece is really marvelous: the two performers intimately mic'd, their running tracks filmed and livestreamed behind them in overlapping, trancelike rhythms. I don't know that I ultimately took away much more than that from the piece, but it's a well-executed and hypnotic hour of theater.

Ainaz Azarhoush and Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh. Photo by Benjamin Krieg.

Weekly Margin 2025, W3: The Antiquities, Show/Boat: A River

1/14/25: The Antiquities

What: Playwrights Horizons, in conjunction with the Vineyard Theatre and the Goodman Theatre, presents Jordan Harrison's play, a speculative view of the future of the world, where artificial intelligence has taken over and now keeps a museum to remember their dinosaur ancestors: humans.

And? There's a care and a precision here that I really appreciate. It comes through in the unity of the ensemble of performers, as directed by David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan. It's in the tenderly curated language of playwright Jordan Harrison. It's in the small details of design by Paul Steinberg and Brenda Abbandandolo. We are placed in the moment of an unknown (to us) future, looking back at ancient times ranging from the 19th century to two years ago to two hundred years from now, when the very last humans are deciding whether or not to continue reproducing. The look-back moments are all linked through themes of life and death, the notion of monsters, the advancement of technology, and most importantly the question of creation: creating life, the responsibility that entails, and the danger of our creations to our own survival. 

It makes sense, then, that we start with Mary Shelley, who, in the grief of losing her infant, concocts the tale of Doctor Frankenstein and his monster. We journey from there to the Industrial Age factory workers, to the world wide web, to robot technology, to social media, to a sentient AI, to increased human-tech modifications, to a rebel sect of humans fighting the dominant tech, to the last remaining colony of non-synthetics. And then like a boomerang, we return again to see the other side of what we lost, of what we have continued to reach for, what Mary Shelley and Doctor Frankenstein were reaching for: not just creating life, but creating immortality or at least a sentient afterlife, so that we would never have to grieve another loss, so that we ourselves will never disappear.

Of course, this isn't achievable. Not really. Every legacy gets a little lost in translation. In the world of this play, it's all a foolish ambition, and humanity built its own destruction and then marched on willingly.

I like the exploration, and I really like the themes connecting each time and place we visit, but I did also feel that the play itself is perhaps a little too neatly tied up and pat. I miss the messiness we got with Dave Malloy's Octet, which seemed a warning and a condemnation of living our lives online, but did find the grace of what we do get from the interconnectedness of our smartphones. This play feels more like a Greek tragedy, but then that's probably the point.

Kristen Sieh and Julius Rinzel. Photo by Emilio Madrid.

1/15/25: Show/Boat: A River

What: NYU Skirball and Target Margin Theater present a reconfiguration of the Hammerstein/Kern musical Show Boat.

And? Target Margin Theater's production is not so much a deconstruction as a defamiliarization. The most racially charged moments in the show are often dilated into a dialog cycle, sometimes monotone, before breaking back into more melodic speech patterns. Further defamiliarizations come in a small ensemble cast primarily with performers of color who, regardless of their ethnicity, wear a sash that says WHITE whenever playing a role that is either white or white-passing. When the sash isn't worn, the presumption of whiteness leaves.

Some of this works in interesting ways, some of it doesn't. It reminded me, actually, that every time I've seen the show it's felt like half the story got cut and I'm just seeing highlights. Weird structure of the book of the show, I guess. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this production to someone unfamiliar with the show, but for returners like me it at least has something interesting to offer, plus a stellar cast with strong voices -- especially Alvin Crawford as Joe, Stephanie Weeks as Julie, Rebbekah Vega-Romero as Magnolia, and Philiipi Themio Stoddard as Ravenal. Though I'll admit I don't understand how the new title connects to the new vision of the show, aside from cluing us that it is a new vision.

A lyric that has always stood out to me took special resonance in this production, especially as the entire cast sang it, and not just Joe: "I'm tired of living and scared of dying." That's ... that's a lot of what's going on right now.

Alvin Crawford, Stephanie Weeks, Suzanne Darrell, Caitlin Nasema Cassidy,
and Rebbekah Vega-Romero. Photo by Greg Kessler.

Weekly Margin 2025, W1: Our Town

1/02/24: Our Town

What: Kenny Leon directs a Broadway revival of the Thornton Wilder classic.

And? Well, that was pretty bad. I don't believe the director--or anyone--did any work to coach the actors through their monologues, and unfortunately it shows. But even more troubling is this production's display of a fundamental lack of understanding of some pretty core themes of the play. A sense of place is vitally important--there's a reason the play opens with the Stage Manager describing in minute detail the layout of a town whose real structure we never see. The other way that sense of place needs to be constructed is in the company's use of mime: it needs to be precise, specific, and so real we can almost feel it ourselves. Again I wonder if anyone coached the cast on this. Instead these mimed items float in a nowhere-space, being laid down in one place and collected from another. 

Another major theme of this play is that we need to breathe and take in the moments we have, appreciate them, because they'll be gone in another moment. That's rather hard for the audience to take away from this production, whose Stage Manager throws away moments like packing peanuts, and rushes the cast from scene to scene like he's got a train to catch. While I was grateful for an early reprieve from a production I was not enjoying, this isn't the way to do Our Town. God, it made me miss the David Cromer production so much.

Oh and hey to return to specifics, or rather specific vs. universal. I think unfortunately this production didn't learn the lesson from David Leveaux's misguided Fiddler on the Roof, which aimed for universal by somehow making a story about a shtetl less Jewish. This production opens with overlapping prayers in various languages, starting with the Sh'ma, a Jewish prayer. I noticed also during the third act that one of the gravestones has a Jewish star on it; another I believe had the crescent moon, an Islamic symbol (I'm not as positive on this second one). And just, no. Grover's Corner isn't a magical utopia of religious diversity. It's a Christian town. It's such a Christian town that part of the Stage Manager's opening monologue lists all the churches. No temples, no mosques. Let Grover's Corner be Christian. Let this play be Christian. It's fine. I'm not asking for Jews to be in this story. We have a profoundly different relationship to death than Christians have.

I liked the lanterns.

The cast of Our Town. Photo by Daniel Rader.