Weekly Margin 2022, W10: Jane Anger

2/23/22: Jane Anger, or The Lamentable Comedie of JANE ANGER, that Cunning Woman, and also of Willy Shakefpeare and his Peasant Companion, Francis, Yes and Also of Anne Hathaway (also a Woman) Who Tried Very Hard

What: A workshop of a new play about Jane Anger, author of the pamphlet "Her Protection for Women" and--this play posits--the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets, in the time of quarantine during the plague (well, one of them), who visits Shakespeare as he struggles to break through a bout of writer's block. Playwright Talene Monahon also stars as Shakespeare's abandoned wife Anne Hathaway (not to be confused with Oscar-winning actor Anne Hathaway).

And? It's a workshop so take that with the grain of salt it deserves. I like a number of the themes, particularly toward the end, about rewriting history, and what one would be willing to sacrifice of great work to achieve some portion of happiness and peace. Shakespeare, in this iteration, is a brilliant artist and a truly bad man, and the question becomes, is he worth keeping around for the plays and poetry he writes, regardless of the vulnerable people he harms--a question we are actively grappling with as we topple the likes of Rowling and Whedon over their toxic and harmful behavior. Because yes, another big point this show is making is that none of these questions we have now are new, not even about how to survive a plague. So there are definitely interesting ideas in play here, but the play isn't fully baked and unfortunately I think it's got the wrong director. A lot of the humor grates more than amuses, especially between Shakespeare and Francis; the reason I'm laying blame on the director is that when Anne Hathaway finally appears, played by the play's author, Talene Monahon, I started to understand at last the intended tone of the piece. Monahon's Anne Hathaway is hapless but earnest, delivering ridiculous lines without assiding or irony. The jokes aren't meant to be guffaw-inducing, like they're delivered in the first half of the play, but they're funnier for it. Before we think I have a problem with asiding, Amelia Workman's sly and knowing Jane Anger begins the play with an audience address prologue and her charisma helps carry us through much of the more awkward sections of what follows. tl;dr: I enjoyed the women, tolerated with waning patience the men, and think this show has legs but it's not there yet.

Amelia Workman and Talene Monahon as Jane Anger and Anne Hathaway.
Photo by Valerie Terranova.

Weekly Margin 2022, W9: Into the Night, A Valentine for Sondheim

Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

• Original Theatre's Into the Night.
• Fiasco's A Valentine for Sondheim.

Weekly Margin 2022, W8: Burst

Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

• TheaterMidwest's livestream of Burst.

Weekly Margin 2022, W7: The Tap Dance Kid, Black No More

2/04/22: The Tap Dance Kid

What: New York City Center Encores!'s concert staging of the 1980s musical based on the Louise Fitzhugh novel Nobody's Family is Going to Change, about a young boy who wants to be a tap dancer and his uncle who wants to be a choreographer on Broadway.

And? I knew going in that this show was going to sideline Emma (who gets the big hero moment in the novel source material) in favor of young Willie; what I didn't anticipate is that both kids would both be sidelined by Uncle Dipsey, who gets as much stage time and I-Want arc as Willie. It's probably rooted in not wanting to make the young child actor carry too much (or perhaps worried that an audience needed a sympathetic adult character to invest in), but anyway. I also knew going in that no one seems to be a fan of either Charles Blackwell's book or Lydia R. Diamond's adaptation of it (which seems like another misguided bowdlerization--they removed, for example, the fat rep we're supposed to get with Emma, and come on, her fatness isn't meant to be a figure of fun, and are we going to pretend that discrimination against fat Black bodies isn't demonstrably worse than fat white bodies?). And yeah, the script is pretty not-great, hampered further by how utterly inertly each book scene is played. I know the Encores! series has extremely limited rehearsal time, but woof. And the songs? They're pretty forgettable too. It's a damn shame because the novel is great. But. The tap dancing? That's extraordinary. That's why we're all here. And they deliver on that. Young Alexander Bello is terrific as Willie, even tapping furiously away during a costume mishap in the grand finale. Trevor Jackson as Dipsey is an amazingly gifted dancer (which is lucky, because he has zero stage presence when he's speaking or singing; but when he's dancing he comes alive). And though he's not there to dance, Joshua Henry as antagonistic father William teaches us all how to treat a song like a monologue, taking us on a full journey, and reminding us what truly great acting can be (but then, we already knew that from his performance of "Soliloquy" in Carousel).

Trevor Jackson and Alexander Bello as Dipsey and Willie.
Photo by Joan Marcus.

2/05/22: Black No More

What: The New Group presents a new musical based on a 1931 afro-futurism novella of the same name, about a new scientific invention to change the pigment of Black people to make them look white, and thus escape the stigma of racial discrimination. The first man to undergo the experiment, Max, then journeys from Harlem to Atlanta and marries into a family who leads the local chapter of the off-brand Klan in this exploration of the dangerous corrosive effects of cultural assimilation.

And? The show functions more as a parable than a story, its characters (though ably performed by the uniformly excellent cast) symbols without necessarily being fully three-dimensional individuals. To a degree, it works, but it cuts off some of the emotional journey at the knees, especially when characters who are established at the top and bottom of the show as important emotional anchors don't actually have much to do in the way of character or plot development over the course of the story itself (I'm thinking specifically of Ephraim Skyes's Agamemnon and Lillias White's Madame Sisseretta, both of whom are relegated to the sidelines for the meat of the show). That's something that could be fixed, with more rewrites, but they're not there yet. Where we are though is still someplace pretty interesting. The Roots's co-founder Tariq Trotter is lyricist, co-composer, and secondary lead as Dr. Crookman, the inventor of the Black No More device, and he's achieved a lot with the score of this show, a world where everyone speaks in meter with verbal dexterity. Brandon Victor Dixon, pretty much always the most interesting part of any show he's in, continues that trend as Max, a man caught between wanting the genteel life he's always been denied and having to cannibalize his soul to achieve it. As the show's conscience Buni, Tamika Lawrence is captivating in her staunch integrity and heartbreak. Bill T. Jones's choreo is, for the most part, excellent and surprising (and proving that we don't need no stinkin' turntable to have dynamic staging). Qween Jean's costume design and Nikiya Mathis's wig and hair design are beyond gorgeous, full of striking silhouettes and individual markers for the ensemble. Jeff Croiter's lighting design is eclectic, embracing both classical stage lighting and more contemporary lamps  to throw us into a world we don't quite know but could. 

Brandon Victor Dixon, center, as Max Fisher, with ensemble.
Photo by Monique Carboni.