What: Lincoln Center presents Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson's play about the lead up to the Kyoto Protocol (an international agreement to limit carbon emissions to stave off climate change), and Don Pearlman, the man who tried to stop it.
And? Dynamically staged with overlapping scenic transitions, this play reminds me a lot of another historical drama to play the Mitzi E. Newhouse theater, Oslo. Though this one has a more sinister bent: whereas the protagonists in Oslo were idealists, aiming toward unity and peace, Pearlman is a cynic whose goals are chaos and disunity. As he narrates the piece, we are with him the whole time, and it's a bit like keeping pace with Iago or Richard III. Stephen Kunken, always excellent, really shines as Pearlman, constantly moving, shifting gears, and looking for the next way in.
 |
| Stephen Kunken as Don Pearlman and the cast of Kyoto. Photo by Emilio Madrid. |
11/19/25: Playing Shylock
What: Theatre for a New Audience hosts Mark Leiren-Young's one person play starring Saul Rubinek, a mix of fact and fiction as Rubinek refuses to perform the second half of Merchant of Venice, talking instead about the thorny subject of antisemitism and Jewish representation, as well as a retrospective on his life as the son of Holocaust survivors.
And? This play needs some serious reshaping and editing. It can't seem to decide what it wants to be. Is it a loving tribute to Rubinek's father, an orthodox Jewish actor of Yiddish theater who survived the Holocaust only to emigrate to Canada where there was no Yiddish theater? Is it a moment for Rubinek to muse on the complicated nature of representation and performance of Jewish identity? To have a straw man argument about cancel culture (I'm not saying there isn't a discussion to be had about the unnuanced nature of cancel culture, but the one he was having didn't feel grounded in a real moment)? To explain to us in detail why Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare's plays? To perform the grief of having a play's run get cut off midway through the suddenly final performance? Or perhaps just to showcase how good a Shylock Rubinek can perform, both in English and in Yiddish?
See, that's a lot of things. And while some of them work on an individual level, they're not cohering well into one moment that feels organic. Perhaps it would benefit from having Mike Birbiglia take a swing at the shape of it, when the art of Storytelling crafts a larger conversation with many side streets along the way. I sense also that both playwright and actor feel very precious about a lot of moments that don't necessarily belong as part of the larger thrust. It feels meandering and unfocused, a bit too much like if Saul Rubinek went onstage and actually just rambled for two hours; and for that matter it's got a good collection of inaccurate information, one of which I pointed out during an audience participation moment and which he dismissed as "close" because it didn't feed the way the script was actually written.
His performance of Shylock's monologues were great though.
 |
| Saul Rubinek as himself. Photo by Dahlia Katz. |
11/21/25: Beetlejuice
What: The return engagement of the musical adaptation about ... I mean, y'all know what this is about, right?
And? Mostly a repeat, though it was interesting to note the changes since the original Broadway run (Beetlejuice's first song is great about revising its lyrics to fit the moment, removing the doubling of Delia/Miss Argentina (I miss you Leslie Kritzer Rodriguez!), and the dialed down set from the touring production).
11/22/25: Sweet Smell of Success
What: MasterVoices presents John Guare, Marvin Hamlisch, and Craig Carnelia's musical adaptation of the 1957 noir film, about an unscrupulous press agent Sidney Falco desperate for the mentorship of the even more unscrupulous gossip columnist, JJ Hunsecker. The original run of this show, starring John Lithgow, Brian d'Arcy James, and Kelli O'Hara in one of her first big Broadway roles, had an abbreviated run on Broadway.
And? I was actually supposed to see that abbreviated run--we had tickets--but it closed right before we got to New York for our summer trip. I've listened to the album but not enough to really know it well, and I'd seen the film ... at some point. It's a pretty nasty story, so if we go in knowing that, we can at least engage with the performances and storytelling. The gift of MasterVoices is having a true chorus of beautiful voices backing up the score. As anyone who knows me can guess, I got a ticket to this--sure, yes, I was curious to finally see a version of the show, but--primarily because my favorite actor, Raúl Esparza, plays the lead, JJ Hunsecker. One of the reasons I've always loved him as a performer (outside of the usual being really good and knowing how to use the range of his voice to great effect when singing) is how alive he is: he's always present in the moment and not frozen into a track. I've gone back to see him multiple times in a show in order to see how those moments change. It's always grounded in the character he's built, organic to the story being told, but it changes. And lucky me, I actually got to see that moment in action at the performance I attended. As the show began, it became clear that Esparza's mic wasn't working properly. He was projecting well enough and I was close enough that I could still hear it, but they stopped the show pulled him backstage to fix his mic. When he returned and the show resumed, he began his monologue over again, this time with different timing, intonation (and yes, more than one fourth-wall break glance at the audience to acknowledge we were going through this again). Ugh, I just love him so much, you guys. He's unafraid of being profoundly unlikeable.
No comments:
Post a Comment