Weekly Margin 2022, W23: Notes on Killing ..., Fat Ham, Wonder Boy, Keeping Company with Stephen Sondheim

5/26/22: Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members

What: Soho Rep's production of Mara Vélez Meléndez's new play about Lolita, a young trans Boricua who is angry at the long history of mismanagement of Puerto Rico's finances by colonialism and the US's paternalistic approach. She arrives at the reception lobby of PROMESA (without quite remembering how she got there), only to encounter a receptionist with more than a few tricks up their sleeve.

And? Pacing-wise, it could use some tightening, but otherwise this is a terrific ride. The cast is excellent: Christine Carmela, as Lolita, has hilarious screwball comedy instincts as well as a grounded earnestness to carry the more emotional beats; and Samora la Perdida, as the Receptionist, is deliciously versatile in their various drag personae. And oh, those drag personae! Director David Mendizábal also serves as the production's costume designer, and in addition to Lolita's pantsuit, which recreates the iconic look of activist Lolita Lebrón, they also have built seven gorgeous drags (in collaboration with wig and makeup designer Earon Nealey) for the Receptionist to don as they impersonate each of the board members of PERSONA in the scheme to dismantle the system without it regenerating. Geraldo Díaz Sánchez's scenic design is a deceptively simple corporate office lobby that transforms under Kate McGee's lighting design to a variety of fantasy spaces.

Christine Carmela as Lolita. Photo source.

5/27/22: Fat Ham

What: The Public Theater hosts James Ijames's Pulitzer winning reimagined Hamlet, about a young man named Juicy who's visited by his father's ghost before a family barbeque.

And? Having seen Wilma Theater's backyard film of Fat Ham over the shutdown, I was interested to see what The Public would do with the script. Overall, I think it's a success. Marcel Spears is great as Juicy--pouty, dry, and constantly getting caught by everyone when he spends too much time asiding to the audience. Adrianna Mitchell is also terrific as Opal, Juicy's childhood friend, too scrappy to allow herself to get caught in anyone else's tragedy. And Chris Herbie Holland makes for a delightfully stoned Tio, stealing the show whenever he is onstage. Maruti Evans's scenic design is deceptively simple, giving us the flat surface shell of a picturesque back porch, but in collaboration with Skylar Fox's illusions, there are surprises to be had in many corners.

Billy Eugene Jones, Marcel Spears, Benja Kay Thomas, Calvin Leon Smith,
Adrianna Mitchell, and Nikki Crawford as Pap, Juicy, Rabby, Larry, Opal,
and Tedra. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

• Bristol Old Vic's Wonder Boy.
• PBS Great Performances's "Keeping Company with Stephen Sondheim."

Weekly Margin 2022, W22: The Karpovsky Variations, Mac Beth, The Red, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Peter Pan, Miscast Gala

5/16/22: The Karpovsky Variations

What: Boomerang Theatre Company presents Adam Kraar's new play about about Jewish and musical identity in a fragmented family.

And? full review here.

Barbara Broughton, Rivka Borek, J. Anthony Crane, and Chris Thorn as
Great Momma Rose, Julia Karpovksy, Barry Karpovsky, and Harold 
Karpovsky. Photo by Isaiah Tanenbaum Theatrical Photography.

Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

• Red Bull's broadcast of their 2019 Mac Beth.
• Original Theatre's The Red and The Hound of the Baskervilles.
• National Theatre at Home's Peter Pan.
• MCC's annual Miscast Gala.

Margin Notes: The Karpovsky Variations

The Karpovsky Variations

Barbara Broughton, Rivka Borek, J. Anthony Crane, and
Chris Thorn as Great Momma Rose, Julia Karpovsky,
Barry Karpovsky, and Harold Karpovsky. Photo by
Isaiah Tanenbaum Theatrical Photography.

Seen on: Monday, 5/16/22.
My grade: C+

Plot and Background

In the wake of the death of her estranged father Lawrence, Julia tries to reckon with her memories of him, her desire to be his musical equal, and her struggle to connect with her Jewish identity, as she keeps crossing paths with her father, her uncles, and her great grandmother Rose across airport lounges. Adam Kraar's play had a reading as part a Jewish Plays Project festival, was further developed at The Playwrights' Center and the New Group Theatre, and now has its world premiere with Boomerang Theatre Company.

What I Knew Beforehand

That it dealt with themes of Jewish identity and klezmer music.

Thoughts:

Play: Julia wants to play us a song, but she can't find the notes for it: "If I could play you this song, you would love me." Her driving need in the play is two-fold: recapture the sound of klezmer music that her great grandparents knew in Poland, and through that sound gain her father's recognition and love; her father, a gifted but lapsed clarinet player who is now a nomadic journalist, able to be pinned down for conversations only in airport lounges while he waits for his connecting flight. Her father, who will never explain his antipathy toward his own musician father, nor why he can't come home for holidays, why he cannot give his brothers or his only child the space for them to exist concretely, groundedly, in a non-liminal space. Her father, who cannot even accept the gift of a pan of home-made kugel (though one should point out how inappropriate that is as a carry-on item on a transpacific flight). Julia is descended from a line of "wandering Jewish minstrels" and wants to follow that path, seemingly as nomadic as her father but pronouncedly more unhappy, less able to thrive in that rhythm.

Playwright Adam Kraar's notes on the performance style say that the transitions of the play should be "fluid, musical," that the form of the play is "jazz-like," the tone "similar to klezmer. Unfortunately what kept striking me during the performance was how decidedly unmusical the production is. There is a static stiffness, an unfamiliarity, unstructured pauses and interruptions. I wanted to feel the dialog had been choreographed, a slanting harmony and conversation of the instruments of the three brother's bombastically different personalities, the contrasting tenor of Maxine, the outsider, and somehow a combination of Julia's memories and Momma Rose, who remembers and loves them all, to bring them all together into something like music. Something like the song Julia is trying to play us. Too many scenes felt like they went on too long without making a significant enough contribution to the theme to justify their length, too many emotional beats are struck and struck again without significant contextual alteration. 

This play advertises itself as being at least in part about excavating a Jewish identity; however, I felt very few notes actually touched on that notion. Julia's fixation on her distant father is barely about how he didn't raise her Jewish, but more about how he never taught her to play the clarinet the way he could, the way he kept assuring her he eventually would.

I wanted to engage with this story. I wanted to recognize the characters, recognize myself in this family of descendants of the diaspora, of Jews who perhaps don't practice much but still hold certain tenets sacred. I wanted them to stop carrying the kugel pan sideways. I wanted more from this than I got.

Weekly Margin 2022, W21: The LightHouse Series (Group 1), Harmony, The Vagrant Trilogy, Into the Woods, Try This On For Me

5/09/22: The LightHouse Series (Group 1)

What: SoHo Playhouse's new play competition (I'm only seeing Group 1, which includes the plays What I First Desired, In a Relative Way, Tuam, The Gospel of Efunroye, A Ladder to the Moon, and Gayby).

And? An interesting combination of styles and storytelling, from noir to hip hop to fragmented narrative to historical speculation to poetic fantasy to stand up comedy. 

5/10/22: Harmony

What: National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene presents Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman's new bio-musical about the popular six-man German singing group, the Comedian Harmonists, whose success was cut short when the Nazis rose to power.

And? It felt like it was written by someone who knows nominally how Musicals About Real People are supposed to go, with workhorse dialog to get us from A to B, and then another song, applause, rinse, repeat. But for a true story with stakes this high, the scenes and songs just feel inert, the character choices generic. The singing is all truly excellent, which we definitely need for a show about a tight six-part harmony group, and even some of the dancing is fun, but overall I was underwhelmed.

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

Margin Notes: Try This On For Me

Try This On For Me

Seen on: Sunday, 5/15/22.

My grade: B+. Experimental and Intriguing.

Plot and Background

The New York Neo-Futurists, an artistic collective building original work, present the world premiere of Lee LeBreton's immersive/interactive play, which takes its audience through a surreal flea market on the hunt for the perfect outfit.

What I Knew Beforehand

Just the premise, which is how I like it.

Thoughts:

 

You enter a room framed with clothes on clothes on clothes: racks of them in all colors hugging each wall, a display of mannequins adorned with hats, scarves, jewelry. The performers greet you quietly as they putter about the space, sorting and hanging more clothing on the racks, inviting you to seat yourself in any of the variety of comfy chairs around the space which frame the piano and the three small platforms with additional racks of clothes, old suitcases, hat boxes. You've been told you might get to leave with something but you don't know what that means yet. And then the show begins.

The three creators/performers of this show have had to straddle multiple identities in their lifetime: queerness, transness, Blackness, Brownness, feminine, masculine, youth and maturity. The phrase "Try This On For Me" refers not only to one element of the interactive experience--audience members trying on articles of clothing on display in the space--but also to trying on new identities, and sometimes just trying on new ideas. What does it mean to put on a hoop skirt and promenade slowly through a space, shoulders back and hands wafting? What is the acceptable shoe for a young man with feet too small to fit in conventional men's dress shoes? What clothes free you? What clothes tell the world who you are? Show creator Lee LeBreton frames these questions as three criteria: is it comfortable? is it legible (does it say who you are)? is it desirable (does it make you feel sexy/attractive)? These questions Lee asks himself, and then the performers ask us as well, about the clothes we wore to the show. They tell us stories from their childhood, from their now-hood, the challenge of finding outfits to meet all three criteria, to help them safely navigate the intersections of their identities. And when the audience is invited to peruse the racks for themselves, we can ask again of a new item we might acquire: is it comfortable? is it legible? is it desirable?

The day we went one of the three performers was in isolation, unable to be in the space with us but present in pre-records of her sections, and finally on FaceTime to introduce her to the audience and what we found. I'm pretty impressed with how smoothly they made this pivot, such that I began to question if it were planned or no (I still think no, but that they had enough warning to make quality recordings of Nicole Hill's sections). The work is engaging and introspective, inviting the audience to self-examine in equal measure to their reaction to the stories we're being told.

And I love my new jacket.