Weekly Margin 2025, W8: Dakar 2000, Truth Be Told

2/18/25: Dakar 2000

What: MTC presents a new play by Rajiv Joseph about a young man in the Peace Corps in Dakar in 2000 and his run-in with the US embassy after he reappropriates supplies to help a local community build a garden.

And? I had a hard time staying focused in the first half, but the second half is very compelling, with truly wonderful work being done by Abubakr Ali as the charismatic Boubs.

Mia Barron and Abubakr Ali as Dina and Boubs. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

2/21/25: Truth Be Told

What: The Gene Frankel Theatre and ARA Theater present William Cameron's two-hander play: a showdown between a journalist and an implicated mother in the aftermath of another mass shooting.

And? full review here

Michelle Park and Francesca Ravera as Kathleen Abedon and Jo Hunter.
Photo by Bronwen Sharp.

Margin Notes: Truth Be Told

Truth Be Told

Seen on: Friday, 2/21/25.

Michelle Park and Francesca Ravera as Kathleen Abedon
and Jo Hunter. Photo by Bronwen Sharp.

Plot and Background

The Gene Frankel Theatre and ARA Theater present William Cameron's two-hander play: a showdown between a journalist and an implicated mother in the aftermath of another mass shooting. Jo, a crime journalist with a bestselling book about a mass shooter, meets with the mother of another mass shooter to record her experience, but is surprised by the revelation that Kathleen believes her son is innocent of the crime.

What I Knew Beforehand

Just the premise.

Thoughts:

Play: I think the premise is an interesting one, but I wonder if maybe the scenes are in the wrong order. From the moment Kathleen voices her opinion that her son didn't commit the murders, the audience and Jo know that she's delusional. And the audience's conviction never really changes. I think there could be a complicated journey explored if there were a sense that Kathleen's theories have some actual grounding. If the audience's notion of truth could be questioned over the course of the play, if we begin to wonder as well if Julian was framed, it would make Kathleen's final collapse all that more shattering. Instead, the audience sits through ninety-plus minutes of someone going through the denial stage of grief with little to no ripples in her waters. There's a richness to be mined here, of these two opposing characters with their complicated relationships to their sons, to violence, and to truth, but the play isn't there yet.

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.