The Assembled Parties: Confronting Our Expectations

(not a review, but a response to The Assembled Parties)

SPOILERS BELOW

Jessica Hecht as Julie, Jeremy Shamos as Jeff,
and Judith Light as Faye

There's a little Jewish Mothah in all of us.

Just as the stereotypical Jewish Mother is always looking to matchmake her children (and everyone else's children), so we the audience, while watching a story unfold, are looking for clues for how it will all work out. This includes, of course, any romantic options for our characters. We expect a little romance with our drama.

So when Jeff, under interrogation by his best friend's parents, with whom he is spending a Jewish Christmas dinner, starts describing their son's girlfriend in glowing terms, even revealing that he met her first, we think, "Aha! He is in love with her." And perhaps he is, but as we never meet her, that is a love that never comes to fruition. But then - his best friend's cousin Shelley, an awkward young woman, appears, and her Jewish Mother deliberately leaves the two of them alone to get acquainted. Could perhaps this be our expected romance?

Buyer & Cellar: A Basement Utopia

Buyer & Seller, by Jonathan Tolins, directed by Stephen Brackett, starring Michael Urie, currently running at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, through May 12th.


Buyer & Seller opens with Michael Urie, in a delightfully dynamic and honest solo performance, perched on the edge of the stage, clutching a coffee table book to his chest, explaining to us what it is we are about to see. While behind him the neutral white space with piano bench, chair and table holding teapot wait for his use, he clarifies for us - interrupting himself several times - what is actually going on. The play is, as he is quick to point out, strictly a work of fiction and not meant to incite the ire of the apparently highly litigious Ms. Streisand. He is an actor - "You may know my work ...No? Oh..." - and Jon, the guy who wrote this, met Barbra only once, when she offered him part of her Kit Kat - an offer he declined. No, this is a work of fiction inspired by this very real book:

Pippin: Not Your Average, Everyday Kind of Show

Pippin is a show that, regardless of its actual merit, engenders a lot of affection. It is telling that, after the stunning acrobatics and joyful greeting of beloved actors, the moments that were met with the most applause were not conclusions of songs, but rather beginnings - the opening piano chords of the overture, the beginning of the Manson Trio, the only Fosse choreography preserved from the original production. The audience was so delighted to be there, reliving their first time with the show, enjoying this new time, ready to be swept away by the entrancing Magic in the opening number.

"Magic to Do" - Patina Miller & Company

"With You" with acrobats.

It's a very familiar show at this point - after Little Shop, it seems to be one of the more "done" musicals for high schools. Jackson 5 covered their songs. And there are familiar faces up there for us to love, too - Matthew James Thomas, recently of Spiderman, as our increasingly charismatic titular character, Patina Miller, of Sister Act fame (a striking if unnerving presence), the real-life couple of Terrence Mann and Charlotte d'Amboise deliciously hamming it up as king and queen, and Broadway favorite Andrea Martin, holding the audience all too easily in her capable brilliant hands.

Another Goodbye

Every year at Christmas, Grandma and Grandpa visited. They drove out to LA in their RV, bearing cookies and gifts. Chocolate Refrigerator Cookies, Sugar Cookies, Shortbread, Melt-a-Weighs. And a big tin of flavored popcorn for everyone, and a fresh deck of pinochle cards for each kid, and some kind of polished stone from their winter home in Quartzsite, Arizona. An ornament, usually handmade, sometimes by Grandpa himself. Grandpa had a video camera and documented the unwrapping of presents. Grandma, in the evening, sat at Daddy's upright piano and played carols, singing along, inviting the rest of us to join in as we pleased. As she got older, Daddy played more of the carols, but Grandma always sat near the piano as he did, and sang along with him.

After Christmas, we'd all pile into the car and follow them back to Quartzsite, where we'd spend a day or two wandering the swap meets, enjoying all the Christmas lights and decorations in the RV camp full of other retired grandparents enjoying a warmish winter.

A Good Night for Ghosts: a review of Then She Fell

Alice and Alice

"I wonder, when you look in the mirror, who stares you down at night?"

A Nurse greets you at the door you almost didn't find, past the ruined garden, down the stairs, around the corner. She checks your name off a clipboard and tells you to find your place, labeled, at one of the three tables. Waiting for you is a ring of keys, and another Nurse is at hand with your elixir. This is Then She Fell, Third Rail Project's immersive adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice books, and it is both strange and familiar.

The lobby where we waited was appropriately dark and curious. Our bags left in an open trunk, our coats piled on a single coatrack, and locked boxes scattered throughout the room, begging to be unlocked - one box contains letters from Lewis Carroll to Alice Liddell (the real-life inspiration and intended audience for the Alice books), another photographs of the two, another a tiny parlor of dollhouse furniture, complete with minuscule playing cards scattered on the floor and a toppled chess set. Each table has a folder full of hospital admittance forms, already filled out.

Eventually the Doctor stepped up to a microphone to welcome us and tell us the rules of the space - no talking, no opening closed doors, relock anything you happen to unlock with the keys you've been given. He then spoke on liminality while nurses guided audience through various doors, one or two at a time. So the audience was separated and sent on its various journeys, and so the show began.