Blank New World

Getting Their Irish On

2012-01-23T11:39:00.004-05:00

It's becoming a tale as old as time: Friends entering their 30s get trapped between youth and maturity and don't know which way to turn. But even though some dance and song (a few numbers cowritten by Anthony Rapp) have been added to the batter, Gary Duggan's Dedalus Lounge never congeals.

Welcome to Pittsburgh, Miss Julie

2012-01-11T12:13:00.007-05:00

Writer-director (and Pittsburgh native) Robert Cucuzza plucks August Strindberg's Miss Julie from the "classic" stage and drops it back into the experimental-theater arena, where it began, with Cattywampus, a rambunctious contemporary-Pittsburgh-set adaptation starring Jillian Lauren and the the always engaging D.J. Mendel.

I'm always impressed at how multitalented and generous so many New York stage actors are. Cattywampus has live underscoring by two musicians, one of whom (at the piano, if I recall correctly) was Elevator Repair Service's Mike Iveson, recently seen in the entrancing The Select (The Sun Also Rises).

Brits a-Plenty

2011-12-23T10:29:00.007-05:00

The end of the year also ushers in the end of the annual Brits Off Broadway series, which had me making repeated trips to 59E59 for Neighbourhood Watch (above), an enjoyable new comedy by Alan Ayckbourn, and Farm Boy (below), a gratifying two-character follow-up to War Horse from the same author.

Broadway's Bounty

2011-12-07T11:06:00.009-05:00

Cititour.com is a nifty little website that's kept me off the streets the last few years by giving me the opportunity to review some of Broadway's seasonal offerings. This fall's harvest has been rather bountiful so far, with the mesmerizing revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical Follies and Hugh Jackman's rousing song-and-dance fest, Back on Broadway (above), as well as new plays from a talented up-and-comer (Katori Hall's The Mountaintop) and an established veteran (Theresa Rebeck's Seminar) that are providing great roles for actors of note Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Bassett, Alan Rickman, Jerry O'Connell, Hamish Linklater and Lily Rabe.

Sugar and Spice

2011-12-02T14:56:00.005-05:00

Carla Ching sets Hansel and Gretel adrift in NYC in her evocatively titled The Sugar House at the Edge of the Wilderness, a darkly enchanting fairy tale, from Ma-Yi Theater, that unfortunately fractures before it finales.

Grossly Talented

2011-11-15T12:52:00.010-05:00

I never realized I knew so many people so enamored with Paul Gross. Unless you've caught some of his films, or TV series like Due South, He doesn't have the kind of name recognition south of the Canadian border that he does on his home turf. But when I mentioned that I was interviewing him for Time Out New York, I was peppered with questions like, "How did the interview go?" "What was he like?" "What did he have to say?" He is as charming and witty as the Broadway revival of Private Lives that he's currently starring in with Kim Cattrall.

Incidentally, at the performance I attended there was a light but noticeable murmur in the audience when Gross's character, Elyot, uttered the words, "Thank you kindly"--a line that became a catchphrase for Constable Benton Fraser, the Mountie mired in Chicago that he played on Due South. Did that line really come from Noel Coward, I wondered? Or was Gross having a bit of fun with his fans? And when I got home and looked it up, I discovered that, sure enough, "Thank you kindly" did indeed come from Coward. Almost makes you believe Gross was destined to play Elyot, which, judging by his funny and commanding performance, could very well be the case.

The Demon Puppet of EST

2011-11-08T16:26:00.004-05:00

Steven Boyer delivers a deliciously attuned performance as a shy teenager and the devil puppet who comes to control him in Hand of God, a very funny, if somewhat uneven, play by Ensemble Studio Theatre Youngblood member Robert Askins.

Kids Back in the Day

2011-11-03T09:08:00.007-04:00

A.R. Gurney's 1974 play Children takes place on an island off the coast of Massachusetts, and under the auspices of the sure-handed TACT, it's aged quite well.

My Meeting With Jane

2011-10-14T10:20:00.003-04:00

My first journalism job was at Back Stage, which asked current and former colleagues for reminiscences for its 50th anniversary. Mine--about halfway down the page--involves Jane Alexander, the NEA and a trip to D.C.

Not Quite Front-Page News

2011-10-03T21:05:00.007-04:00

I had never heard a newspaper's front-page story referred to as "the wood," until Time Out assigned me to review a play with just such a title. The Wood is described as a "no-holds-barred" account of the life of controversial New York Daily News columnist Mike McAlary, but I suspect some holds were definitely barred.

Enter, Stage Left

2011-09-22T10:09:00.006-04:00

Leave it to the New York Neo-Futurists--with a just little help from Eugene O'Neill-- to turn stage directions into an engaging evening of theater, with a title that's nearly as long as the 80-minute show, The Complete & Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O'Neill, Volume 1: Early Plays/Lost Plays. It's also a nifty primer for those unfamiliar with O'Neill's early works (and let's admit that's most of us), kind of like a Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). See it if you can.

Levels of (Partial) Comfort

2011-09-14T10:59:00.006-04:00

The Off-Off Broadway theater company Partial Comfort Productions scored a slew of accolades last year with A Bright New Boise, a play that was more solid and satisfying than many produced by major Off Broadway companies. Their new show, After., is about an innocent man released from prison thanks to DNA. Somehow its author, Chad Beckim, one of the company's founders, and his colleague, Molly Pearson, have kept the company afloat while for 10 years pursuing that thankless task of developing and producing new plays. I had the chance to talk to them about how they do it.

Teresa's Powers

2011-09-12T11:07:00.003-04:00

I'm disappointed that I only have one more Teresa Deevy production at the Mint to look forward to, nest fall's Katie Roche. The good news is that there's such demand for their current Deevy offering, Temporal Powers, that it's been extended through Oct. 9. She's fantastic with character and plot, and I think her female characters are especially rich.

Sweet But Not So Short

2011-08-19T09:51:00.006-04:00

It was good to see Christopher Durang and Neil LaBute in fine form in the first installment of Summer Shorts 5--although they were the longest bunch of shorts I've ever seen at the annual event. Favorite Durang line: "So my next husband was a heroin addict. I mean, I learned my lesson with the crystal meth guy."

Chicago Casey?

2011-06-29T15:32:00.007-04:00

Am I the only one who thinks the Weisslers are hoping that doe-eyed Casey Anthony will be acquitted of filicide...so that they can sign her up as the next Roxie Hart in Chicago? And from what I've seen of her sly and scrappy defense attorney Jose Baez (pictured with Anthony in the AP photo above) on HLN's trial coverage, he's a natural to play Billy Flynn. Just imagine the two of them singing and dancing their way through "We Both Reached for the Gun." They been performing a metaphorical rendition in Orlando for the past six weeks.

A Zoo Story

2011-06-23T09:46:00.008-04:00

When upper-middle-class couples start behaving like undomesticated animals, chances are good that you're watching one of Michael Weller's recent two-handers, Fifty Words or Side Effects, which I reviewed for Time Out New York, and which boasts a big, brassy performance from Joely Richardson as an emotionally troubled, unhappily married woman desperate to break free.

Solo in Times Square

2011-06-13T16:11:00.008-04:00

I waited for more than two hours to see Theatre for One yesterday, but it was worth it to have Dallas Roberts hold my hands and tell me a story. He is one fearless actor, and his powers of concentration are immense. The portable booth where one actor and one audience member gather for a five- to ten-minute performance was in the middle of Times Square, just down the block from the TKTS booth, and since yesterday was Tony Awards Sunday, New York 1's live red-carpet pre-show was spilling forth from the Jumbotron for two hours' worth of the one-on-one performances.

Since the booth, which is the brainchild of Tony-winning scenic designer Christine Jones (who's also Roberts' wife), isn't soundproof, it wasn't the most ideal circumstance from which to watch him enact Zayd Dohrn's wrenching eulogy to a lost younger brother, "Legerdemain," but enjoying any sort of unique theatrical experience in New York requires patience and tolerance -- and it was free. (Plus, taking part in this intimate actor-audience exchange didn't prevent me from learning in real time that Kathleen Marshall won the Tony for best choreography.)

Black on the outside, and lined with red fabric inside, the booth is intentionally reminiscent of old-time peep shows, and my experience was akin to a theatrical lap dance -- with emotional nakedness instead of physical nudity. A chair was placed in front of the booth's built-in seat, and I understood why when the board separating actor and audience was pulled away and Roberts and I were facing each other with our knees almost touching. He asked if he could hold my hands while he told me a story about the band he and a friend formed in high school and how his younger brother, who was a gifted classical musician, wanted so much to be a part of it, even though the storyteller and his friend didn't have much talent.

Oh, and I should mention that as he tells this story he's trying, unsuccessfully, to choke back tears and hold himself together. I'm surprised I didn't feel more discombobulated by the whole experience (when friends cry in my presence I never know what to say or do), but Roberts is an actor who's hard to look away from -- especially when his hands are holding yours and resting on your knees. David Cote mentions in his Time Out New York review having trouble making eye contact with Lauren Ambrose at Theatre for One, but I looked away only a couple of times. And I didn't know if I was supposed to reply when the dialogue included questions (I mumbled the odd word) or applaud at the end (it didn't seem appropriate to).

The impact, the thrill even, that I felt when I stepped out of the booth and the nice young man shepherding people in and out handed me a "playbill" card with the name of the actor and the author sticks with you. As Charles Isherwood notes at the end of his New York Times review, that kind of close connection, whether physical or mental, can be a rare, unnerving and ultimately very rewarding experience.

Red Alert

2011-06-02T09:47:00.007-04:00

One of the great things about writing for Time Out New York is having the chance to talk to an array of up-and-coming American playwrights, including Amy Herzog, a Jersey gal with a colorful assortment of relations, whose latest, 4000 Miles, begins performances Off-Broadway this week. "There's a huge rift in my family between the socialists and the Communists," she told me. And I thought Thanksgiving with my family was interesting.

Family Matters

2011-05-27T11:38:00.005-04:00

Jonathan Marc Sherman's new play about expectant parenthood, Knickerbocker, isn't exactly a bundle of joy, even if you're familiar with the parent-child themes he digs into in previous works like Women and Wallace. The program note from the Public Theater's usually effusive artistic director, Oskar Eustis, even seemed tentative. But at least you get to keep company with stage notables such as Christina Kirk, Bob Dishy and Zak Orth.

Sister Act

2011-05-19T16:32:00.004-04:00

‎"They’re sort of tortured by music, and they can’t make it come out of themselves the way that they want to--what a great idea for a show!" So says Joy Gregory, book writer of The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World, a musical about the worst band in history, in my Time Out New York preview piece.

Speaking of previews, I caught an an excerpt of the show at the Guggenheim as part of its Works in Progress series last month and was reminded of another dark, intriguing musical that I saw at Playwrights Horizons a few years ago--Grey Gardens.

Wonder Widow

2011-05-05T10:54:00.006-04:00

Amid all the Broadway openings of late I caught this charming little play at Ars Nova about a young woman coming to terms with widowhood, Be a Good Little Widow.

Keen Look at Benefactors

2011-04-15T17:45:00.008-04:00

I read Michael Frayn's Benefactors many years ago, and it had such an impact on me that I could still remember assorted lines as I watched the Keen Company's smart revival.

Heads Up

2011-04-11T11:40:00.007-04:00

The photo above could very easily give you the wrong impression about Bring Us the Head of Your Daughter, the latest provocative production from The Amoralists. Based on the visual, I would have pegged the show as a slight, playful campfest, and it's anything but. The bracing anarchist spirit that this East Village theater company has built its reputation on is very much alive.

At times author and director Derek Ahonen's reminds me of the work of a young Adam Rapp. Both have a knack for putting their characters into emotionally harrowing and brutally absurd situations. But Ahonen shows more refinement in the way he explores the destructional codependency of a lesbian couple and their 18-year-old daughter, who's wanted for murder and cannibalism.

Some animals eat their offspring, but in Daughter it's the reverse—metaphorically speaking, at least. Garance (Sarah Roy), who makes a late-inning entrance, has been accused of killing mothers, as her own two fall apart at home. Jackie (Anna Stromberg), the biological mother, is an alcoholic whose moods shift suddenly and violently from raging fury to weeping apology. She's perfectly paired with her wife, relationship junkie Contessa Springs (Mara Lileas). That Contessa never gets out of her pajamas during the three-day period over which the play is set speaks volumes about her. So does the understanding she bestows on her half-brother, Dexter (Jordan Tisdale), who raped her when she was a teenager and now comes face to face with her for the first time since then.

Ahonen couldn't care less about political correctness as he explores the ways we indulge children, forgive those close to us too easily, or condemn them too harshly. Garance spews venom at Contessa but worships Jackie, and in the physical and emotional melee that ensues, all four characters try passive-aggressively and aggressive-aggressively to negotiate a settlement that they can live with, even if it's probably not the best choice for any of them. Early news releases listed Daughter's running time at 95 minutes, but it's actually closer to 110 minutes, with no intermission. Even with spells of comic relief, it's hard to watch so much destruction for so long, but it's also hard to look away from.

A Play-Filled Spring Season

2011-04-01T15:20:00.005-04:00

The Broadway season is no longer a 12-month affair, or even a nine-month liaison. Aside from a smattering of shows that opened in the fall and winter, the overwhelming majority of Tony hopefuls have been crammed into the final two months of the 2010-11 season, as close to Tony Award time as possible.

Below are my thoughts on some of the first plays to hit Broadway in 2011, via links to my Cititour.com reviews and ranked in order of appeal:

The Importance of Being Earnest

Arcadia

Ghetto Klown

That Championship Season

Praise for Critics

2011-03-28T19:13:00.005-04:00

I don't usually get choked up reading about critics and other assorted theater journalists (even though I am one), but this tribute to Mel Gussow and Michael Kuchwara by Howard Sherman, the soon-to-be-former executive director of the American Theatre Wing, is so well written and moving that it's hard not to. Thanks, David and Jason, for bringing it to my attention.

All Albee in D.C.

2011-03-15T15:39:00.007-04:00

The only thing as good (or better) than seeing great theater in New York is seeing great theater out of town. My grandfather always said that food tastes better when you dine out, and the same is often true of theater. Perhaps that's because many regional theaters just have more actual space for their spaces -- large lobbies where audiences can congregate and not feel suffocated by the hordes. Perhaps it's also the excitement of getting to see the work of actors who don't normally perform in New York.

Those two elements contributed to my enjoyment of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and At Home at the Zoo, the two plays that Washington D.C.'s Arena Stage is presenting in full productions as part of its Edward Albee Festival. The rest of the two-month-long event includes readings of all the other plays in his canon. And I love theater people with a sense of humor, so of course I had to snap up the official festival "Team Edward" T-shirt (pictured above), which riffs on the Twilight phenomenon. Someone who works for Arena Stage said that Albee loved the shirts.

As for the productions, both were subtly ferocious; I noticed I was leaning in to the characters as if I were part of their conversation. Definitely not something I expected to do during Pam Mackinnon's Virginia Woolf, because I have such vivid memories of the last Broadway revival where Kathleen Turner and company raised the roof with their high-decibel (but also effective) performances.

I'd never seen Tracy Letts act onstage before -- only had the pleasure of enjoying his playwriting with shows like Bug and August: Osage County (talk about plays that raised the roof). Somehow he plays George as both milquetoast and a commanding presence. In the same vein Carrie Coon captures Honey's etherealness while also showing that she's a heck of a lot savvier than the others think. All four characters (Amy Morton played Martha and Madison Dirks as Nick) are considerably less glamorous than they were in Anthony Page's Broadway production, which makes their struggles, conceits and failures resonate that much more forcefully.

At Home at the Zoo was just as much of a treat because I didn't see it when it was presented in New York by Second Stage a few years ago as Peter and Jerry, and I'd never seen a production of The Zoo Story, which is part two of these combined one-acts. James McMenamin is quite captivating as Jerry, who seems like a relatively normal, if overly talkative, character when he first approaches Peter in the park. You can feel him fighting and losing his battle with his demons as the show reaches its climax.

The one moment that jarred me out of the play was a Stephen King reference that obviously was added well after the play's Off-Broadway premiere in 1960. Originally, Jerry asks Peter if he prefers Baudelaire (a French poet) or J.P. Marquand (a popular early 20th-century novelist). In the current production, he replaces Marquand with Stephen King. I'm guessing it's because the assumption was made that not many audience members would know who Marquand was -- although I question how many of them would know the name Baudelaire. It seemed out of place because Albee's plays feel both timeless and rooted in the era in which they were written. Change just a word or two and you notice the difference.

Normal Joys

2011-03-11T11:39:00.003-05:00

Let's go over how shallow I am. When I first heard that a production of The Normal Heart was coming to Broadway, I wasn't terribly excited. Not that I didn't like the play. But I'd read it and seen the Off-Broadway revival about 10 years ago and didn't feel a strong need to see it again. Then I read the announcement that Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory is joining the cast and suddenly ... it's must-see theater!

Birmingham on My Mind

2011-03-09T12:30:00.004-05:00

It intrigues me when different parts of my life come together around a certain thing or theme. As I was making my way through Catherine O'Flynn's beautifully haunting second novel, The News Where You Are, I was assigned to review the stage version of David Almond's award-winning, and equally beautifully haunting, children's novel Skellig at the New Victory Theater.

The common denominator is Birmingham, England. O'Flynn's novel is set there, and Almond's play was presented by the Birmingham Stage Company. Not sure if this means I'm due for a trip to the Midlands (I haven't even been to Birmingham, Alabama, although I have a friend from college who lives down there now.)

You can see my Skellig review on the Time Out New York website. News Where You Are I read purely for pleasure and enjoyed as much as I did her first novel, What Was Lost. O'Flynn writes incisively and poetically about people with solitary lives and the space they occupy in the world. Almond focuses on children finding their place in the world; O'Flynn on elderly people dealing with theirs.

General Francisco Franco Is Still Dead ...

2011-03-08T13:55:00.008-05:00

... but he's onstage at 3LD Art & Technology Center in Spy Garbo (played by the wonderful Steven Rattazzi), along with double agents Wilhelm Canaris and Kim Philby. But what could be a devilishly clever production often plays like a bewildering academic lecture. I reviewed this multimedia fantasia for TheaterMania.

A Trove of Treasure Tickets

2011-02-25T14:07:00.009-05:00

A friend sucked me into the guilty pleasure of Living Social. Like Groupon, it's a website that offers daily group discounts on everything from exercise classes to dry cleaning.

Over the last few months I've purchased quite a few things (gotten some great discounts on Body Shop and American Apparel merchandise). But I'd never seen an offer for Off-Broadway theater tickets until today. You can purchase $21 tickets to Treasure Island, starring Tom Hewitt at the Irondale Center in Brooklyn, which was also home to Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play and the Civilians' In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards.

Any time I can see a play without leaving Brooklyn, I'm happy, but this deal also includes a Rum Punch at the Smoke Joint, a barbecue place en route from the subway to the theater. However, I'm not sure how successful the promotion has been so far. As of 4 p.m. today, 37 tickets have been sold. The offer will be available through the weekend, so it will be interesting to see what the final total amounts to.

UPDATE: The final numbers are in: 73 tickets were sold. At $21 to $26 each, this isn't exactly a financial windfall -- the total would be between $1,533 and $1,898 -- but for at the Off-Broadway level, it's not an insubstantial amount either.

A New Page in Anne Frank's Diary

2011-02-20T22:10:00.004-05:00

Here's a piece I did about Rinne Groff, whose new play Compulsion, is now running Off-Broadway at the Public Theater. The cast includes Mandy Patinkin and an Anne Frank marionette:

Rinne Groff can't remember a time when she didn't know Anne Frank. The daughter of a mother who was both Dutch and Jewish, she's had copies of The Diary of Anne Frank from the time she was a child. Talking by phone about the Public Theater's production of Compulsion, her play about an actual writer obsessed with adapting Anne's diary for the stage, Groff, whose first name is pronounced "Rinna," casts her eyes to a bookshelf stocked with different editions of the source material. Some were part of her collection even before the Amsterdam teen who hid from the Nazis for two years became part of Groff’s professional life.

"I can see a paperback that is very old that was mine, a new version of the diary that just says 'the definitive edition,' which was something my mom gave to me because she wanted to share it with me," says Groff, 41, herself the mother of two young girls. "And a few years ago something came out called 'the revised critical edition' that I bought when I was already working on this project."

Sharing space on that shelf is a rare copy of Meyer Levin's stage adaptation, which Groff's husband purchased for her on eBay for about $50. That script, which Levin boldly self-published after his play was presented in Israel in 1966, despite not having the legal rights to Anne's story, continued to haunt him until his death in 1981 at age 75. He railed against the official Pulitzer Prize-winning stage version for not authentically capturing Anne's voice and sought to win recognition for his, alienating colleagues and friends in the process.

Levin felt he was the ideal candidate to adapt Anne's diary for the stage, since he helped to get it published in the U.S. But he was passed over by producer and Group Theatre cofounder Cheryl Crawford in favor of Hollywood screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, whom Levin felt downplayed Jewish elements of the story. His destructive obsession stirred Groff's passions 16 years ago when she read a review of a nonfiction book about Levin and Anne Frank.

"Anne Frank was definitely the hook, but it struck other chords with me," says Groff, whose previous Public Theater production, The Ruby Sunrise, dealt with how to tell the story of a would-be television pioneer. "It brushes up against so much great American theater history, it's also a backstage saga about a writer trying to get something on. Then there are larger cultural issues that are raised as to who has the right to control something and how are those rights exercised, and if there are differences morally, it opens up the notion of what should be in the public domain."

Yet even though Compulsion is a true story, Groff wasn't entirely comfortable depicting real-life characters, so in her play Levin (played by Mandy Patinkin) is called Sid Silver, the nom de plume he gave himself in his historical fiction novel, also called Compulsion, about the Leopold and Loeb trial. Another dramatic element Groff culled from Levin's life was his work with marionettes, which drop in and out of the action. Well before Anne Frank became part of his life, Levin designed marionettes and ran a puppet theater in Chicago, staging productions that included O'Neill's The Hairy Ape. Groff's Compulsion opens with a marionette Anne writing in her diary.

That device also gives rise to the image of Levin as puppeteer, desperate to have a hand in controlling Anne and her story. Compulsion questions whether his motives are selfless (to give a voice to all the Jews who died in the Holocaust) or selfish (to attach his name to the work of a writer destined to endure the ages). Silver’s conviction to his vision is as admirable as his abrasiveness and tunnel vision are off-putting, but in spite of everything Groff believes he was good at heart, a man fighting forces that wanted to "de-Judaize" Anne.

"I have great sympathy for Sid Silver, I have great love for Sid Silver," she says tenderly. "His way of being in the world is a flawed way of being, but it's also very earnest. He stops being able to see accurately because he is so interested in not having his vision perverted. I always like to emphasize is that he is buoyed by love. And it's a romantic love in a way. He fell in love and would do anything, go to the ends of the earth, because of that love."

A Tale of Two Plays

2011-01-26T11:22:00.005-05:00

With America's political attention aimed at ourselves these days, and what little energy we have to focus on international affairs devoted to conflicts in the Middle East, Honey Brown Eyes' subject -- the Bosnian War -- seems like it happened a century ago. (I know it happened in the 20th century, but you get my drift.)

Promising playwright Stefanie Zadravec shows the effects of the war on two former friends who were members of a rock band and now are on opposing sides of the conflict. Not only do they end up in different cities, but they also appear to be stranded in different plays in the Working Theater production that I saw for Time Out New York. The first act plays like an over-the-top melodrama, the second, an understated character study.

The Younger Brother Also Rises

2011-01-19T11:59:00.005-05:00

The first time I saw Pablo Schreiber act was either in the TV crime drama The Wire or the Off-Broadway play Sin: A Cardinal Deposed. Both were around five or six years ago, and the order escapes me. In Sin he sat silently onstage for nearly the entire 90-minute show before delivering a stirring closing monologue about the sexual molestation he suffered at the hands of a priest when he was a boy. In The Wire, still the show for which he's best known, he played, to quote my friend Joshua, "the less-stupid guy from season two."

I knew back then that he was Liev Schreiber's younger brother, but he's become such a successful actor in his own right that it's easy to forget. Now he's back on TV in another cable series, FX's critically acclaimed but low-rated Lights Out and appearing in another Off-Broadway show, Rajiv Joseph's Gruesome Playground Injuries. When I interviewed him for Time Out New York he told me that for him to ever work with brother Liev, it would have to be a project with two great roles for actors that are 10 years apart, like True West. I think they should they just hold out for the next Waiting for Godot revival.

Doused and Deconstructed

2011-01-14T15:19:00.008-05:00

How I am growing to embrace weird downtown experimental theater. I quite liked Tom Ryan Thinks He's James Mason Starring in a Movie By Nicholas Ray in which a Man’s Illness Provides an Escape from the Pain, Pressure and Loneliness of Trying to be the Ultimate American Father, Only to Drive Him Further Into the More Thrilling Though Possibly Lonelier Roles of Addict and Misunderstood Visionary -- whew! -- which has a milk-drenching scene (above) that brought back memories of the tomato-juice-dousing scene in Elizabeth Marvel's Hedda Gabler. Not only are these great ways to illustrate power struggles, but they're also lots of fun to watch.

The back of the one-page program thanks a list of folks for providing financial support to the production, from director Daniel Fish and starring Thomas Jay Ryan and Christina Rouner. I was heartened to see so many theater artists contributing to the development of weird experimental theater. Among the names: Michael Cerveris, Kathleen Chalfant, Jesse Berger, Colleen Werthmann, David Zinn, Linus Roache, Moises Kaufman, David Herskovits, Emily Mann, Henry Stram, to name a few.

Plays With Plenty of Passion

2010-12-21T14:50:00.005-05:00

So many theater folks have bemoaned the lack of new hits on Broadway this fall that I wonder if anyone's noticed all the fabulous new plays that were part of the Off-Broadway landscape, usually for runs that were far too short.

TheaterMania's list of the 10 best shows of '10 includes six Off-Broadway shows. Besides Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play, the entry that I contributed, two of my other faves, New York Theatre Workshop's hypnotic Little Foxes and Simon McBurney's soul-stirring A Disappearing Number, also made the cut.

If I could have picked all 10 myself, I also would have included Middletown, Clybourne Park, A Bright New Boise and In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards.

In general I'm not a fan of year-end best and worst lists (I'd rather just focus on what I can look forward to next year), but a couple of others that I enjoyed are the picks from Time Out New York's three staffers, which demonstrate a diversity of stage offerings, and the often maligned Charles Isherwood's list in New York Times, also a celebration of bright, new and largely Off-Broadway plays.

Sparkling Venice: "Like a Wild Animal"

2010-12-15T17:04:00.007-05:00

The first time I saw David Harbour on stage I couldn't help noticing that he's incredibly beautiful. It didn't take long to realize he's also very talented and smart (a Dartmouth grad, to boot). The production of Virginia Woolf he did with Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner on Broadway remains vividly etched in my mind even though I saw it more than five years ago, as does that episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent in which he played a religious nut who kills his family.

So I was happy to see that he was one of the new cast members joining the Broadway transfer of The Merchant of Venice, replacing Hamish Linklater as Bassanio, and was glad to have the chance to talk to him about his role. My favorite quote of his is about working with Al Pacino: "He is like a wild animal, sort of like a dog that you don't actually know how to train. But I love that because that's when something inspired actually happens."

The show's even stronger than it was in Central Park this summer (or perhaps I was just better able to focus since I wasn't melting in 95 percent humidity). Either way I found Harbour's performance quite thrilling. In Bassanio's first scene with Antonio, the one where Bassanio convinces him to borrow money for him, Harbour touches the back of Byron Jennings' neck in a way that's both intimate and manipulative, and it demonstrates the power Bassanio has over his friend. A really interesting choice.

Pee-wee at the North Pole?

2010-12-10T15:33:00.008-05:00

Anyone who's caught Pee-wee Herman's Broadway show and isn't a polar bear or a penguin might have noticed that the theater was freeeeeezing! Even though I saw it on a moderate November afternoon, I kept my coat on the entire time. Well, according to an insider (and when I used this term it means I heard it second- or third-hand), Paul Reubens wants the theater to be that cold so that his Pee-wee makeup doesn't run.

And here I thought he was just eternally youthful!

Pee-wee's big Broadway debut is one of several shows that I recently reviewed for Cititour. Here's a rundown of some highlights and lowlights, in descending order:

The Pee-wee Herman Show

The Pitmen Painters

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Lombardi

Overall, though, I can't complain. I've seen some fantastic stuff this year, even just this week. In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards was a knockout, as was the National Theatre's Hamlet, with the terrific Rory Kinnear, which I watched with critics and audiences at Cinema 1 2 3 Thursday night, and tonight I begin my three-part journey to The Great Game: Afghanistan.

Minor Break

2010-11-23T15:37:00.007-05:00

Someday I hope to have as transformative an experience at a Neil LaBute play as I did when I saw The Mercy Seat with Sigourney Weaver and Liev Schreiber. It was the day after a snowy Christmas back in 2002 (I had to look up the year or I would have sworn it was closer to 2005), and it remains my favorite post-9/11 play.

Not to sound like a Grinch as we embark on the holiday season, but I wasn't in a very merry mood after seeing David Duchovny in LaBute's current offering, The Break of Noon, which has little to recommend it beyond a memorable closing monologue and rising star Tracee Chimo, who was part of Circle Mirror Transformation's stellar quartet a year ago.

Haunted by Rapp's Ghosts

2010-11-19T14:27:00.009-05:00

Had the pleasure of introducing a friend to the work of one of my favorite contemporary playwrights, Adam Rapp, last week when I was assigned to review the New York premiere of the first full-length play he ever wrote, Ghosts in the Cottonwoods, presented by the plucky young Amoralists troupe down at Theatre 80.

Sitting in that packed house full of members of the X and Y generation was the closest theater experience I've had to a rock concert since Rock of Ages, which essentially is a rock concert. Among the opening-night crowd I spotted Sam Waterston (not surprisingly) and Annie noticed America Ferrera.

Annie usually just drinks wine, but she needed a martini after this show, a bloody tale of a backwoods family homecoming that ends in brutality. I was transported, felt like I'd been put through the wringer, my usual response to Rapp's plays, so while I enjoyed a margarita, she sipped her martini at Simone and asked me to fill her in on what I knew of Rapp's oeuvre which, for what it's worth, is quite a lot.

Favorite Mistakes

2010-11-17T10:43:00.002-05:00

Here's my love letter to the marvelous Michael Shannon ... also known as my review of Craig Wright's Mistakes Were Made. I didn't expect the Oscar-nominated actor to be such a scintillating comedian, but he brings much-needed vitality to Craig Wright's musty play.

The first time I saw Shannon onstage he was starring in a gonzo piece of playwriting -- also at the Barrow Street Theatre. And since it wasn't written by Adam Rapp, it could only have been by Tracy Letts. The show was Bug, and it's actually too bad it played before New York City's bedbug crisis took hold. It would be even more more tense and disturbing to watch now.

Political Hangover ...

2010-11-03T10:23:00.006-04:00

No, I'm not talking about last night's election results, I'm referring to In the Wake, Lisa Kron's ambitious new play (here's my Time Out New York review) that begins during the chaotic mess of the 2000 presidential election and follows its main character, Elle, through the next several years -- her personal life imploding as the U.S. spins woefully out of control. It's a smart, compelling drama that doesn't quite knock one out of the park but does offer an array of intriguing characters, including six high-caliber roles for women.

The most memorable is Judy (played by Deirdre O'Connell), a woman from a disenfranchised Kentucky family who, even though she works in relief aid, doesn't believe that voting will change the system. She was able to escape her upbringing because she was smart and lucky, she argues. And she cites the failure of her niece, whom she'd taken in, to finish high school as proof.

Is Judy right? Maybe, but it's also possible that her niece sensed her aunt's defeatist attitude and assumed from that that her efforts would never amount to anything. This is a prime example of Kron challenging her audience to debate the merits of each character's self-awareness, and one example of why I found In the Wake so stimulating.

Arthur and MacArthur

2010-10-22T15:18:00.006-04:00

Earlier this week a Facebook friend announced that "In my head all day, Richard Harris has been whining about a cake." This of course sent me to my iTunes library because I suddenly had to hear his full seven-and-a-half minute rendition of "MacArthur Park," with that wonderful lyric about the the consequences of not writing down the recipe to a favorite pastry. It was actually one of the first MP3s I illegally downloaded from Napster in the day (growing up, we had the 45 single at home). But, I soon realized, the only thing that could possibly be better than listening to him try to sing the words would be watching him put his whole body and soul into the number.

And wouldn't you know, there happens to be a YouTube video of Harris singing "MacArthur Park." Not the whole song, unfortunately, but some nifty clips, along with a report on the how he came to record the song. His ex-wife is even featured as a commentator.

What makes his rendition of the song so great is that he acts-sings it as if it were a musical theater number -- fitting since he played King Arthur in the movie of Camelot and later on the Broadway stage. And wouldn't you know, YouTube also has a clip of Harris performing the title song in an early-'80s revival, which was taped for HBO.

In my family's pre-VCR days I can remember going through our local TV Guide and circling all the times it scheduled to air, so I could watch it again and again. If I watched the whole show again today, I fear my critical response wouldn't be quite so kind, but it's delightful seeing Richard Harris put all he's got into this number. Unfortunately, it's not possible to embed it here, so you'll just have to go to here to watch it.

The Van Hove Effect

2010-10-14T15:20:00.008-04:00

I'm a relatively new convert to avant-garde downtown theater scene, and when I see shows as captivating as director Ivo van Hove's Little Foxes, I wonder what took me so long. He certainly seems to command the respect and admiration of the actors he works with, including Christopher Evan Welch, who won an Obie for a van Hove-directed Streetcar Named Desire and reunited with him to play Horace in Little Foxes. During our interview, Welch spoke of van Hove with the fervor of a true believer.

And I'd just like to add that I love the trailer that New York Theatre Workshop has assembled for the show. It captures the dark mood and almost creepy Dark Shadows atmosphere of the production.

Plath Plus Film Minus Poetry

2010-10-12T15:29:00.009-04:00

Someday I'm going to write a play about a fictional meeting between Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, and see if Charles Busch is available to play Sexton. (If she hadn't committed suicide in her 40s, Elaine Stritch would be a good choice to play her in her later years.) Sexton may not have been as great a poet as Plath, but she was a volatile drunk and mother who had an affair with the shrink treating her for depression, and I think her she'd be a great subject for a bioplay.

Which brings me to my review of Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath, a new Off-Broadway play that arrives in New York via the Edinburgh Fringe. The funny and subversive production has a lot going for it -- a capable star and nicely integrated film clips -- but her life unfolds as if it were a Lifetime movie (minus the happy ending).

Wonderful Will

2010-10-06T12:43:00.011-04:00

Among the fun things I've gotten to do in recent weeks is interview the wonderful Will Eno, whose new play, Middletown, which arrives Off-Broadway at the Vineyard next week, is very good. If The New York Times called him "a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation" for Thom Pain (based on nothing), I think this show will make him a rock star.

I haven't stepped on the amateur stage in years, but reading his work makes me want to come out of retirement. The language is so sublime, his sentences are poetic and beautiful, yet they seem almost ordinary and effortlessly constructed. Somehow you feel the urge to say them as you read them. Sample (from Middletown): "You get the mail, it's a clothes catalog. Maybe you leaf through it, maybe think, 'Hey, I could buy those pants.' Then you think, 'But then it'd just be me, again, in a different pair of pants.' "

Emerald From the Isle

2010-08-26T15:50:00.004-04:00

Some of the "lost" plays that I've seen over the years I suspect weren't accidentally misplaced but intentionally tossed aside -- because they weren't very good. Manhattan Theatre Club's recent revival of Accent on Youth, for example, was a painful experience.

But I was happy to discover that's not the case with Teresa Deevy's excellent Wife to James Whelan, which truly was lost (the late Irish author's nephew discovered the manuscript in an envelope). The 70-year-old play is a masterful character study about gender and class conflict, and it's just the first Deevy plays in the works at the spunky little Mint Theater Company.

Keep on Truxton

2010-08-24T16:41:00.009-04:00

Among the pleasure of the new AMC series Rubicon is that it's shot in New York and the cast includes a fine bunch of New York stage actors, including Dallas Roberts, Christopher Evan Welch and Michael Cristofer (left), who plays the most intriguing and eccentric character on the show, Truxton Spangler, the big boss of government think tank API. He's also the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of The Shadow Box and the subject of this piece, I wrote for TheaterMania.

On another AMC note, I saw this Hollywood Reporter story about a new series called The Killing that the network is planning, but I hardly think it's only the fifth original series AMC has aired. Not that I blame anyone for forgetting about its misguided remake of The Prisoner but, even though it was much longer ago, Remember WENN, delightful little comedy by Rupert Holmes that also featured a terrific cast of New York actors, is definitely worth remembering.

Dutch Treat

2010-08-18T00:23:00.005-04:00

With his gangly body and bulging eyes, Dutch standup Micha Wertheim has a body built for comedy. And he uses all of it in his New York fringe festival show Amsterdam Abortion Survivor, to generally favorable results, I thought.

Hartley-less

2010-08-05T17:54:00.005-04:00

Since I go to the theater less in the summer, I try to use the extra time to catch up on movies. If I can't be in Central Park watching a terrific ensemble of actors speak Shakespearean verse as if it were their everyday vernacular or catching a new Off-Broadway show, filling those humid nights with a good movie in the comfort of an air conditioned movie theater, or my living room, is a great place to be.

Aside from a brief foray into the black-and-white coffers of Dark Shadows at the start of the summer, I've been on quite the Hal Hartley kick, rewatching the brilliant Henry Fool and wishing I hadn't wasted my time on the disappointing The Girl From Monday. But as I delve further into his canon it's getting increasingly difficult to find copies of his early films to rent or borrow.

In 2010, it seems that all I should have to do is go to Netflix to get any film in my mailbox in a day or two. But Netflix doesn't have The Unbelievable Truth or Flirt. I found the former at the NYU library, but is it possible that Flirt and a masterpiece like Trust, Hartley's first film with Martin Donovan, were never released on DVD?

Trust and Surviving Desire are available on Netflix via the "watch instantly" function, and while I love the many video clips available on YouTube, I haven't been able to make the transition to watching movies on my computer. Thankfully there's still the good old public library, which has both Flirt and Trust on VHS. Glad I didn't give up that VCR yet.

Still, I hope that not only will those films find their way onto DVD but that the ones that have already been released will be reissued with better prints and maybe even audio commentary from Hartley and his cast. One film he could star with is the enchanting millennium oddity The Book of Life, his only film to star Donovan and Thomas Jay Ryan, my favorite Hartley interpreters. The evocative image above is one of the film's final shots.

Returning to the Beginning

2010-08-02T15:49:00.003-04:00

Since embarking on a freelance career earlier this year, I've found myself returning to my past and again contributing to Back Stage, the publication that gave me my first post-collegiate job in 1993.

It's been a lot of fun, especially since I'm calmer and more confident in my writing ability. Here are my pieces on actors' websites and Facebook pages.

Passing On Secrets of the Trade

2010-07-23T16:21:00.006-04:00

I do hope John Glover will write his autobiography one day. He's a great raconteur, and there aren't many people in the entertainment industry he hasn't worked with. If you ever get the chance, ask him about the first time he saw Isabella Rossellini on the set of White Nights. In the meantime, you can see him play mentor to a theatrically ambitious Noah Robbins in Jonathan Tolins' Off-Broadway play Secrets of the Trade and read my article about him and the show.

Show and Tell

2010-07-15T15:18:00.004-04:00

With a possible repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell once again stirring up the gays in the military debate, Marc Wolf has brought his solo show Another American: Asking and Telling back to New York for a limited engagement. He's still very passionate about the show and the topic , as I learned during an interview for Time Out New York.

Twilight Traffic Jam

2010-06-30T16:08:00.003-04:00

What does it take to bring down the website of the mighty Hollywood Reporter? Vampires. The advisory below was affixed to the Hollywood Reporter email newsletter that I received late Sunday/early Monday.

"Due to our release of 'The Twilight Saga: Eclipse' movie review, THR.com is experiencing traffic levels that can occasionally make accessing the website difficult. Thanks for your patience."

Pulitizers Past and Present

2010-04-22T17:05:00.003-04:00

A Pulitzer Prize doesn't guarantee eternity, as Frank D. Gilroy's The Subject Was Roses, now being revived by the Pearl Theatre Company, proves.

Interestingly, only six Pulitzers for drama were handed out in the 1960s, and two of those went to musicals, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Fiorello!, the driest decade ever for the award honoring the best American play of the year. Was there really such a dearth of great new plays, or was the cultural divide creeping into the equation? Is it, as Ben Brantley points out in this New York Times piece about 2010 recipient Next to Normal, one shouldn't expect cutting-edge honorees from the Pulitzer board?

Short-Shrifted

2010-04-14T11:16:00.009-04:00

I was quite surprised to be asked to review The Irish Curse, Martin Casella's quirky and endearing comedy about the tribulations of being small down there. But Matt Lenz's production is a delight, thanks in large part to a terrific cast led by Dan Butler and Austin Peck.

Coincidentally, my theatergoing highlight of last week was another new play featuring a cast of five men -- Jon Marans' The Temperamentals. The story of gay rights pioneer Harry Hay and the men who founded Mattachine Society in 1950, it is incredibly moving and provocative, both as both a love story and a historical drama. Thomas Jay Ryan and Michael Urie give performances that shouldn't be missed.

Something else that shouldn't be missed (but I will have to) is the upcoming post-show discussion with Barney Frank on May 3. Still, the politician I'd most like to see respond to the play is former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey, who's listed as a future guest. Hay begins the play as married father sneaking off to clandestine meetings with his group and his lover. McGreevey should be able to relate.

Delicious and Delightful

2010-04-09T16:31:00.004-04:00

Rescue Me (a postmodern classic with snacks), Michi Barall's Iphigenia in Tauris riff is utterly delightful — and not just because I got some Entenmann's chocolate chips for showing up.

All in the Family

2010-03-24T16:06:00.001-04:00

Like Suzanne Brockmann, I'd never heard of the film star William Haines until I read that the popular novelist and her husband, Ed Gaffney (who writes under the pen name Will McCabe), were writing and producing the play Looking for Billy Haines, in which the openly gay actor from the '20s and '30s figures prominently. As I'm just as passionate about books as I am about theater, I welcomed the chance to talk to them about their new venture for TheaterMania.

It's a true family affair, starring their son, Jason T. Gaffney not as the title character but as a young gay actor who takes inspiration from him. And believe it or not, only a slight change of pace from the military-themed romantic suspense novels Brockmann is known for.

Secret Success

2010-03-17T17:20:00.007-04:00

Compared to Watergate, the fight to publish the Pentagon Papers looks more like a schoolyard scuffle than an actual battle.

Still, I couldn't help being smitten by New York Theatre Workshop's L.A. import Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers. The combination of old-school newspaper reporting and radio drama was an enchanting bit of nostaslgia, and then there's the nostalgia factor of a cast that includes Peter Strauss and Larry Bryggman.

Snarl It With a Song

2010-03-10T16:51:00.005-05:00

Can't say that I've seen more than the occasional episode of the TV show Glee, although theater and non-theater acquaintances alike seem to think I should be watching it. Perhaps it's the high school memories that I don't want to relive — a time when I desperately wanted to be a soloist but my pitch problem made that a big problem.

The play Glee Club isn't set in a high school, although the behavior of the men in the organization is decidedly ninth grade. It also isn't much longer than my high school music class.

Trouble in New York City

2010-03-03T15:21:00.009-05:00

I respectfully disagree with Jonathan Reynolds' assessment that politics is the reason he's had such trouble getting his abortion play Girls in Trouble produced. Having seen and reviewed it, it's fair to say the only reason to produce it is that it offers a political viewpoint almost never seen on the New York stage. A playwright with liberal leanings wouldn't be so lucky. That still won't turn a rant into a play populated by characters that resemble human beings, but it will make it stand out.

If you're interested in seeing a play that provokes discussion about a touchy issue, in this case race, check out Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park at Playwright Horizons. His characters nearly manage to out-carnage God of Carnage in the second act, and they keep you laughing and thinking all the way.

Reborn in Extinction

2010-02-26T17:03:00.008-05:00

What is it about the detectives on those USA Network series that enables them to cultivate such fans? It was a treat to see Tony Shalhoub of Monk fame play a very different character in Teresa Rebeck's hilarious The Scene a few years ago, and now Psych's James Roday should delight fans by sporting facial hair and stepping outside his TV persona in tone and type in the promising if not quite fully realized Extinction, an Off-Broadway play by Gabe McKinley, the brother of onetime New York Times theater columnist Jesse.

Twice the Mackers

2010-02-18T15:36:00.009-05:00

I've been in a sort of Macbeth maelstrom lately. For one of my final assignments for RT Book Reviews, I talk to Shakespeare scholar turned thriller writer Jennifer Lee Carrell about her new novel Haunt Me Still, in which a celebrated Shakespearean director goes on a quest to undercover a centuries-old manuscript of the cursed Scottish play. (Have to admit I prefer the U.K. title, The Shakespeare Curse, though not her billing as "J.L. Carrell." So they didn't think British readers would be turned off by a book with "Shakespeare" in the title unless it was written by a woman?)

And in the current Time Out New York, I interview Bill Cain, who co-created a short-lived TV series that I loved, Nothing Sacred, and is the author of Equivocation, now at Manhattan Theatre Club, a play about Shakespeare, the Gunpowder Plot, recent American politics and Macbeth. I look forward to seeing the play, which I've only had a chance to read, especially now that I've seen production shots, like the one above, that remind me of the John Doyle Sweeney Todd. And I owe a shout-out to the guy who first told me about Equivocation a year ago. His enthusiasm for the play was infectious.

Man of Many Colors

2010-02-16T17:10:00.004-05:00

Nothing like a job layoff to throw you off your game, and that's what I was faced with this past month. How's that for a lead-in to my review of a solo show in which actor Michael Aronov showcases the many sides of his personality? He has stage presence and then some, and if you go, you may end up becoming part of the show.

Not Yet Royalty

2010-01-20T15:34:00.005-05:00

There's a lot of promise in Robert Askins' Princes of Waco — and in these troubled times promise and hope mean a lot — but I thought this new play at Ensemble Studio Theatre still has its share of growing pains.

Robert B. Parker Dies

2010-01-19T17:10:00.006-05:00

How sad to read about the death of Robert B. Parker, whose private-eye novels featuring the one-named wonder Spenser always seemed to find a home on bestseller lists.

I enjoyed talking to him a couple of years ago about his foray into the young adult market with a book called Edenville Owls, although I suspected he was eager to be done with our conversation so he could watch his beloved Red Sox play a spring training game. Incidentally, he has a peripheral connection to theater, one of my other favorite blogging subjects. One of his sons, Daniel T. Parker, is an L.A.-based actor who's performed with the Actors' Gang.

Moon Over Wambaugh

2010-01-18T18:09:00.004-05:00

When I mentioned interviewing ground-breaking crime writer Joseph Wambaugh to a few friend and colleagues, their replies ranged from "Is he still writing?" to "Is he still alive?"

The answer is a big yes to both those questions, as the evidence shows, and I recommend checking out his new novel, Hollywood Moon.

Critical Healing

2010-01-15T14:13:00.001-05:00

Let me tell you, it's no fun sitting in the audience of a play like Sexual Healing and realizing you've been assigned to review a show that's choking before it even gets out of the starting gate. I don't have the same problem watching a bad movie. If it's a big Hollywood blockbuster like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I can even scoff because so much money in the pursuit of awfulness. Even if that's not the case, in the time it's taken the film to get to the big or small screen, I can convince myself that cast and crew have moved on to other, if not necessarily better, projects.

But when the performers are right in front of you, not even gracing a Broadway stage but crammed into a tiny black-box theater, the mercury in my empathy meter soars off the charts. But I found a little consolation and a lot of laughs in this piece by Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune piece. Clearly, it is a critic's moral imperative to protect theatergoers from bad plays. We're doing God's work.

NEWS Zoo Revue

2009-12-30T17:59:00.006-05:00

If Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert decided to sing their way through an episode or two of their politically charged TV shows, the result might sound something like the Off-Broadway revue NEWSical the Musical, albeit with a battery that's been partially drained.

When I caught Last Cargo Cult, the new Mike Daisey monologue, I was glad to see him performing in an actual theater for the first time in three shows, instead of at Joe's Pub. His verbal wordplay is too clever and finely honed to be lost amid the inevitable bustle of a cabaret room. NEWSical, however, would likely be enhanced in such an atmosphere – and slight inebriation could only add to an audience's enjoyment.

Let It Snow

2009-12-21T11:48:00.005-05:00

New York magazine devoted its year-end double issue to "Reasons to Love New York." Although lately I'm more likely to be contemplating reasons to leave New York, after this cold, snowy, slushy weekend, I'd like to add my own accolade to their extensive list: New Yorkers are extremely hearty people. Either that, or their apartments are so small that they'd sooner face frost bit and hypothermia

As a snowstorm engulfed the city on Saturday, I was certain that that evening's Winter Solstice contra dance would be sparsely attended, if not canceled altogether. But the basement auditorium at the Church of the Village was as packed with people as it would be on any other ordinary night. And we weren't the only ones. The Good Stuff diner on 14th was doing a steady stream of business earlier in the evening, and the subway to Brooklyn was packed as we headed home. (Still, if I'd known how windy it would be or how much snow I'd have to climb over to get home that night, or that I'd have to walk in the street to get to my apartment building, I probably wouldn't have been so bold as to venture out for the evening. Above is what happened when I tried to take a photo.)

The next day I thought anyone longing to see part one of the Signature Theatre's excellent production of Horton Foote's The Orphans' Home Cycle would have ample seating opportunities at the 2 pm matinee. But not only was every seat filled, a few people were even stuck sitting off to the side, on the steps for nearly three hours.

This weekend was enough to put me in the holiday spirit. How many more reasons could one need to love New York?

Cult Favorite

2009-12-10T17:17:00.007-05:00

The always provocative Mike Daisey has a new monologue at the Public, The Last Cargo Cult, a provocative, political and personal look at the global financial crisis. And this time he's performing in an actual theater, not at Joe's Pub -- a definite improvement.

So is the fact that you get a playbill and a dollar bill. when you take your seat, as I explain in my Time Out New York review.

Courageous Colleen

2009-11-30T18:16:00.010-05:00

Three years ago I had the chance to interview Australian novelist Colleen McCullough who, even if she'd never written another book, would be a literary legend for The Thorn Birds. (Her people requested that the interview be via fax, but it still counts in my mind.)

At the time she was battling macular degeneration, a disease that affected her vision and her ability to read and write. Amazingly, she was able to save her sight but, according to this piece in the Times of London, she's still not well. Next year she's due to undergo brain surgery for another serious ailment, trigeminal neuralgia, also called the "suicide disease" because of the extreme pain it causes in the face.

She is one talented, courageous lady and I hope she'll be able to overcome this adversity as well.

Questions and Landers

2009-10-22T16:08:00.005-04:00

Some theatergoers I know avoid monodramas so vehemently you'd like they feared contracting mono from them. I can understand why, especially when they're biographical. A person's life story hardly ever falls into neat dramatic structure, and too often I feel like I've been plopped down into a classroom instead of a theater.

But when The Lady With all the Answers became heavy on the biographical data, the pleasure of watching Judith Ivey embody advice-lady Ann Landers pulled me through.

All's Very Well

2009-10-09T15:55:00.006-04:00

What a difference a few months can make! In June (the day Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died, no less) my colleague and all-around pal David and I caught Phedre, the first show in the National Theatre's new initiative to broadcast plays via satellite to move theaters around the world. There were journalists and press agents galore, a reception for VIP patrons (we were not among them) and a line of regular ticket buyer stretching down the block.

Of course, it was that was the project's debut and production starred Helen Mirren, but somehow I expected more fanfare for the second screening, All's Well That Ends Well, even though there were no above-the-title names in the cast (although Clare Higgns and Conleth Hill have been on Broadway and Oliver Ford Davies is a familiar face to PBS junkies like myself).

But the theater (City Cinema 123) was barely half full (or half empty if you're an optimist) for the three- hour screening, and what a shame! It was a visually splendid, thoroughly enchanting production of one of the few (only?) Shakespeare plays in which a woman (Helena) drives the plot. (During the pre-show and intermission coverage director Marianne Elliott and designer Rae Smith explained their fairy tale concept of the show.)

It's certainly worth checking out if you can get to one of the theaters where it's yet to be shown, including the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU tonight. It could be just what's needed to chase away any ghosts left over from Peter Sellars' ill-received Othello.

I also saw that production with the aforementioned David, who said that the way an actor delivered one of play's final lines reminded him of a line delivery from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 classic Teenagers from Outer Space. That's when you know it's time to go home and get some sleep.

Panych Attack

2009-10-07T17:38:00.012-04:00

The Kids in the Hall introduced me to the joys of Canadian comedy during those long post-college days that I struggled to find a job. Since then many other Canadians have brought me great laughs, especially Don McKellar, whose written and/or starred in films I adore (Last Night), TV series (Twitch City, Slings and Arrows) and a hilarious and heartwarming musical (The Drowsy Chaperone).

Earlier this year I enjoyed the comedic panache of Canadian Morris Panych's play The Dishwashers at the Americas Off Broadway festival, so I had high hopes when I was assigned to review the New York premiere of Vigil. Although I give Malcolm Gets props for tackling such a demanding role, I couldn't help wondering what a fellow Canadian like Bob Martin, who so deftly balanced humor and malaise in The Drowsy Chaperone, could have done with the role.

Tales of Two Stories

2009-10-02T16:59:00.011-04:00

Over the last two weeks I took in a pair of testosterone-laced two-handers, both of which were undone largely by too-familiar tropes: Richard Hoehler's Fathers & Sons (pictured), which I reviewed for Time Out, and Keith Huff's much ballyhooed A Steady Rain, starring James Bond and Wolverine, also known as Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman.

Whoever it was that sat me a mere three rows from the stage and Hugh Jackman, I thank you. He's lovely to look at, but why, oh why, did he pick a play that amounts to such hokum to mark his return to Broadway after a five-year absence. Maybe my response to the show would have been kinder if I hadn't just finished reading an excellent new Joseph Wambaugh novel, Hollywood Moon, on the subway before the show. He may have left the LAPD 35 years ago, but he understand police work from the inside.

After seeing A Steady Rain I wasn't surprised to read that Huff graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, not the police academy. He does a nifty job introducing the characters and laying the groundwork for their story, but about halfway through this 90-minute enterprise, believability evaporated. Hugh's character, a Chicago patrol cop, talks about the night bullets were fired into in house, sending his young son to the hospital … but he's back out on duty with Craig's character — the next day!

No major police force would send one of their own back out on patrol 24 hours after their home and family had come under attack! There would be reassignments, visits to shrinks, a procedure to follow before he could be cleared for duty. Once that happened the play never reestablished its credibility, despite the charisma of its capable stars.

Ah well, at least only one ringing cell phone was heard, and that a faint one, and at a point in the show where there was a natural pause, so no actor-audience interaction to report.

Ragtime Redux

2009-09-21T18:07:00.006-04:00

Fall officially arrives Tuesday and with it, an exciting array of new (and old) Broadway shows. One that I'm quite excited about is the revival of Ragtime, and interviewing composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens for this Time Out New York online feature brought back sweet memories of seeing the original production in 1998 at the then-brand-new Ford Center for the Performing Arts (now the Hilton).

I was in tears before the end of the opening number, a big, beautiful, buoyant showstopper that outlined the different ethnic and racial factions whose worlds soon collide in early-20th-century New York. Not just because it so deftly depicted the fear and frustration that ensue when everything around you changes too quickly, but for the way it also demonstrated that when song, dance and story come together in perfect harmony, no other medium is quite as moving as musical theater.

It was a hard act for the rest of the show to follow, and even though I was fairly close to the stage of the cavernous 1,800-plus seat theater, I felt distanced from the characters and story as often as I felt a connection to them. But this time around the show's in a more accommodating house, and I'm excited about the possibilities.

Twisted Sister

2009-09-17T13:38:00.003-04:00

Since there was a heavy metal band called Lizzy Borden in the '80s, why not a 21st-century rock musical called Lizzie Borden that's as sharp as an axe and more melodious than many new tuners?

My only regret is that I couldn't work a "twisted sister" reference into my review, hence this blog title.

Q Rating

2009-09-15T12:53:00.007-04:00

The passes to the swank Avenue Q "closing night" party at Del Posto Sunday night contained a subtle clue about producer Kevin McCollum's surprise announcement that the show wasn't actually leaving New York but returning to Off-Broadway glory next month at New World Stages. "A 'for now' closing party," they read, and given the size and the scope of the festivities (three levels in a Meatpacking District enclave), I'd say producers aren't terribly worried about selling enough tickets (top price now down to $86.50) to keep the show solvent.

I hope the move pays off. I agree that Avenue Q's final Broadway performance was nearly as solid as it was when I first caught it at the Vineyard in 2003, and the show has aged gracefully. I was happy to see two actor-puppeteers that I interviewed a couple of years ago for an article about the touring production were part of the cast, Robert McClure (one of John Tartaglia's successor) and Christian Anderson.

There were only a couple of instances when it seems as if the times had caught up with the show. Closeted gay puppet Rod's fear of coming out to his roommate and neighbors didn't seem as weighty as it did six years ago — a positive sign of how far we've come. On the other hand, the scene where he sighs to Christmas Eve, "I'm an investment banker. And a Republican," and she replies, "Stay in the closet then. You're good for nothing" drew quite the applause — also a sign of the times.

I was among those clapping at that and, along with many others in the audiences, at the line, "Crabby old bitches are the backbone of this nation!" Perhaps that was in honor of my late grandmother — or perhaps because I feel I'm already on my way to crabby-old-bitchdom!

Genesis of Genesius

2009-09-04T17:40:00.006-04:00

Some of my fondest memories as a teenager involve the rehearsals and performances of the high school plays I performed in — not that far from Reading, Pa., where the new musical Genesius, which I reviewed for Time Out New York, is set.

It's not without its charms (audience members even receive a St. Genesius charm as they leave the theater), but ultimately, this show, which chronicles the life of the woman who founded an amateur theater company for teenagers named after the patron saint of actors, is likely to have a longer life at high schools and community theaters than in New York. Still, it stirred lots of sweet memories for me, and even prompted me to Google Steve Hatzai, the high school drama teacher who impacted my formative years. (He's now a theater professional in Philadelphia.)

On the Fringe

2009-08-25T16:11:00.007-04:00

Since I didn't make a summer theater pilgrimage to the Berkshires this August, I had more time to check out a few shows in the New York International Fringe Festival. I would have preferred less from this musical version of The Fall of the House of Usher and more from Afterlight, an ambitious piece from a theater company called Threads, whose goal is the "weaving together [of] faith and art."

Torchure

2009-07-20T23:53:00.002-04:00

I wanted to be sure I was caught up with the Torchwood crew before I left for a vacation to San Francisco Tuesday, so I took in a marathon screening of the Children of the Earth (at an undisclosed location) a week ago.

The five-hour miniseries, which airs on consecutive nights this week, is powerful, sobering stuff, and I expected to like it, but I didn't think it would stick with me the way it did. I slept fitfully the night I saw it, rather disturbed at how children, especially kids of the lower classes, are put at risk not just by alien invaders but by a society that sells them out, not out of cruelty as much as expedience. It's not unlike the careless way we treat disadvantaged children in this country by depriving them of quality schools and health care because we can't be bothered.

A few days later I discovered this article in last Wednesday's New York Times (thanks to Meg Cabot), "The Cathartic Pleasure of a Good Cry," and was reminded of my younger self. The author describes how her three daughters, ranging in age from 13 to 21, are enraptured by tear-jerker books and movies. I was like that once, eagerly awaiting new seasons of TV shows like the brutal and bloody Oz, but as I get older and watch friends have children and the people around me become more important to me, my taste in entertainment seems to be mellowing. Lighter fare that seems to promise that the world will be set right by the time the curtains falls or credits roll holds increasing appeal.

Sing a Song of Shakespeare

2009-07-01T18:14:00.001-04:00

According to this Chicago Tribune article, musicals are the dominant art form at this year's financially strapped Stratford festival. It seems a curious case of life imitating art, as anyone who's seen season one of the hilarious and heartfelt Canadian series Slings and Arrows can attest.

About 5:50 into this clip, two executives of a fictional Stratford-esque festival plot a similar scheme as they diss the Bard. Fortunately, the series, like Shakespeare, sets everything right at the end. Let's hope Stratford does too.

Femme Fight

2009-06-25T18:00:00.004-04:00

Am I the only one who was surprised by this intriguing study from Princeton University grad Emily Glassberg Sands that found unintentional discrimination against female playwrights — at the hands of female artistic directors, no less?

Looking back on the past New York theater season, the new plays that resonated the most with me were all written by women, Lynn Nottage's Ruined, Gina Gionfriddo's Becky Shaw and Lisa Loomer's Distracted. And the first two were staged by theater companies whose artistic leaders are women. I also admired Annie Baker's Body Awareness and Yasmina Reza's Tony-winning God of Carnage and look forward this fall to Theresa Rebeck's The Understudy. (I caught last year's Williamstown Theatre Festival production, and it was a riot.)

When I interviewed Gionfriddo and Sara Ruhl, both agreed that women playwrights had a tougher time getting produced but, though I’m not contradicting the study’s findings, I think that were the economy as robust as it had been several years ago, Ruined would be playing on Broadway. But is it so terrible that it isn’t? The run keeps getting extended (it’s now playing through Aug. 2.

But is it so terrible that Ruined hasn’t transferred to Broadway? It’s ideally suited to Manhattan Theatre Club’s intimate 299-seat space. How much would it lose in the way of atmosphere if it ended up at the Belasco or the Lyceum? The bigger-is-always-better philosophy seems like a product of the old boys club that we should be rallying against.

As for women artistic directors giving lower scores to the plays the women had written when they thought men had scripted them, could it be that they were simply more impressed when they wouldn’t expect a man to be as insightful when it came to depicting female characters?

Of course even if this were the case, isn’t that a form of discrimination as well?

Hearts for Harlequin

2009-06-22T16:56:00.002-04:00

I seem to be running just a little bit behind whatever I do these days. It's far too late for me to comment on the spry and smart Tony Awards broadcast from two weeks ago, one of the best I've seen in years. (The cuteness of the three Billy Elliots as they accepted their Tonys was matched only by the adorableness of host Neil Patrick Harris who, dare I say it, may have even topped my all-time favorite Tony emcee, Hugh Jackman.)

And it's too late to recommend the Heart of a Woman: Harlequin Cover Art 1949—2009 exhibit at Soho's Openhouse Gallery, in honor of the romance novel publisher's 60th anniversary, because I didn't catch it until two Fridays ago, its final day. But it was a hoot, as much from a social history perspective as an artistic one. Forget what they say about not judging a book by its cover; in the world of publishing you certainly can.

As the doctors and nurses on the covers of the novels from the '50s and '60s gave way to the more glammed-up heroes and heroines of the '60s and '70s and then to the chesty Fabio-esque cover models of the '80s, the change in cover art mirrored what was happening in the lives of the women reading these books. How appropriate that some covers from the early days of women's lib 1960s and '70s prominently featured the heroines front and center, while the men were relegated to the background. Nowadays it's not unusual for a cover to feature just the hero, and I'm certainly not sure I like what that implies. Frankly I find the quaint cover illustrations from those days much more appealing than the photographs of the finely chiseled but often generic cover models that so often grace today's novels.

My pal Connie hoped Harlequin was planning some sort of catalog or coffee table book to commemorate the exhibit, but I haven't heard anything to confirm this. If you want to catch a peek at what was, these blogs have some fine photos.

Vieux from Tennessee

2009-06-05T17:36:00.011-04:00

Attentive New York theatergoers have had more than a few opportunities to catch the little known latter-day plays of Tennessee Williams over the past few years. To varying degrees of success, Off- and Off-Off-Broadway theater companies have staged revivals of Small Craft Warnings, Out Cry and now, Vieux Carre presented by the Pearl Theatre Company.

They get a lot of runners on base, even if they don't always bring them home. Still, ambitious theatergoers looking for challenges and rewards might want to check it out. It's also your last change to see a Pearl production at the company's longtime 's the last stand for the Pearl at their East Village home before a the company moves uptown next season.

Not So Perfect Union

2009-05-29T10:38:00.003-04:00

Catching Epic Theatre Ensemble's new Supreme Court romance/political drama A More Perfect Union with about 100 New York high school students certainly made for a memorable evening. Despite their youth they were well ahead of some of the play's plot twists. But with a new Supreme Court nominee this week, it at least seems timely.

Hurts to Be Kind

2009-05-22T15:13:00.002-04:00

Critics weren't terribly philanthropic to the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of The Philanthropist, a play Christopher Hampton (Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Atonement) saw produced when he was still a 23-year-old Oxford grad student. For comparison, I was a receptionist at a sperm bank in the Empire State Building when I was 23.)

Regardless of what you think of the play, which riffs on Moliere's The Misanthrope, or the current production, I'm sure you'll enjoy my interview with Hampton for Front & Center. The playwright-screenwriter-translator-adaptor-etc. made news earlier this week with the announcement that he would write the English-language adaptation of a German-language musical version of Daphne du Maurier's suspenseful novel Rebecca.

That book was one of my favorite reading assignments freshman year of high school. I was already enraptured with musical theater at the time and contemplated turning Rebecca into a a musical I wanted to call Our Beloved Manderley. Plans for the musical have long since been abandoned, so if Mr. Hampton is considering a title change for his adaptation he's more than welcome to mine.

Wet and Wild

2009-05-19T15:57:00.010-04:00

After the success of its five-year-old Brits Off Broadway festival, 59E59 is keepin' it local and inaugurating the Americas Off Broadway festival. I quite enjoyed the first offering, The Dishwashers, and will try to have more appreciation for clean forks and plates when I go out to eat.

Much of the appeal comes from its wacky yet understated sense of humor, something Canadians seem to do terribly well. Did you know that many of my favorite TV shows are Canadian? I'm talking about The Kids in the Hall, Twitch City and the one that's currently in my DVD player, Slings and Arrows, a series every theater lover, whether you hate Hamlet or not, has to see.

Dreams and Dreamcoats

2009-05-18T17:22:00.006-04:00

Curse you, Andrew Lloyd Webber and BBC America, for getting me absolutely hooked on a two-year-old British reality TV show — the outcome of which I already know — to cast a West End musical that I can't even see. I'm talking about Any Dream Will Do, the series that plopped 12 wannabe musical theater performers in front of a British TV audience and asked viewers to vote on which one they wanted to see play the lead in A West End revival of the Lloyd Webber–Tim Rice musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

After a rather chaotic first episode, which took viewers through the audition process and involved a lot more crying than singing, I've become swept up in the contestants' stories and struggles as they perform a song each week to impress a panel of judges that includes a surprisingly bitchy John Barrowman and producer Bill Kenwright, even though episodes are a whopping 90 minutes.

I'm not sure why I like this series so much more than Grease: You're the One That I Want, the American reality show that cast the leads for a Broadway revival of the popular musical that nearly every high school (mine included) does at some point. Perhaps the it's delicious ceremonial stripping of the colored coat from the contestant who's eliminated each week as he sings "Close Every Door," one of the show's ballads. Maybe it's the chance to see Andrew Lloyd Webber as a smart, caring man of the theater, not the caricature he's usually depicted as. Or it could just be that the wannabe Josephs are just more appealing than the Grease contestants, if not more talented.

It's probably also because it's the Lloyd Webber musical I'm most fond of, having seen the original Broadway production in 1982 or '83, when Allen Fawcett, who played Kelly McGrath on my favorite soap opera, The Edge of Night, was playing Joseph.

The show stuck with me. I sang along to the cast album, memorized the lyrics and longed to have a voice like Laurie Beechman so that I could one day play the Narrator (and soon learned that, despite the musical's message, it doesn't always pay to be a dreamer). I used a lyric from the show in my high school yearbook, and still love the song "Any Dream Will Do," though as an adult I've come to realize that the lyrics makes absolutely no sense. And I know some of my more puritanical musical theater friends must cringe when they hear some of the songs' false rhymes. ("All these things you saw in your pajamas,/ are a long-range forecast for your farmers" is one.)

But I will be tuning in for the final two installments, because beyond having the pleasure of watching young hopefuls aspire to musical theater stardom (something that is worth celebrating in and of itself), I'm enjoying being reminded of the sheer joy I felt when I first fell in love with musical theater.

Soul of Souleymane

2009-05-14T17:47:00.010-04:00

With the Drama Desk Awards this Sunday and the Tonys following two weeks later, it's easy to forget that theater, at least Off-Broadway, is a year-round business, and a serious one at that. Although warmer weather traditionally heralds the arrival of lighter theatrical fare, the New Group's new production, Ian Bruce's Groundswell, is a heady drama concerning the struggles of three men trying to find their place in post-apartheid South Africa. My interview with one of the cast members, newcomer Souleymane Sy Savane, is in the current Time Out New York.

Norman and Other Conquests

2009-04-24T16:12:00.007-04:00

Have to agree with a colleague who said this is probably the best theater season we've had in New York in some time. Too bad it comes during a time when so many people are facing economic hardship and may not be able to afford even a half-price ticket.

I'm glad to see that so many critics have lauded The Norman Conquests. After the needlessly dense Coast of Utopia trilogy two years ago, I was skeptical about investing so much time in another three-play cycle, but the two I've seen so far were not only hilarious but also moving, something I didn't expect. Tonight I see the third play, actually the first in the cycle, and I expect the theater to be a bit more crowded than it was last week, when the show was previewing and the audience seemed heavily comped.

It's also great to be able to make three trips in so short a time span to the Circle in the Square when it's in its rightful theater-in-the-round configuration. I hadn't been there in four years, since The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee opened, and at that time the setup was more traditional proscenium.

Before I (attempt to) leave the computer behind for the weekend, here's a roundup of some of my recent reviews for Cititour.com:

the delightful Blithe Spirit

the discomfiting God of Carnage

the disappointing Irena's Vow

Goin' to Solo

2009-04-20T12:33:00.006-04:00

As I await the release of new X-Men and Star Trek movies next month, I'm also excited about a much less splashy film, The Soloist, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx, based on Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez's relationship with s schizophrenic homeless man from skid row he befriended. It touches on some things that I find particularly moving: the power of music to soothe and heal, the tragedy of mental illness and the contrast between the beauty and the hardship of downtown Los Angeles.

But for a completely unrelated reason, I particularly appreciated the last paragraph of the Hollywood Reporter review:

"One thing is for certain: This will probably be the last movie ever to focus on a newspaper columnist. The filmmakers insist that the story takes place in a newsroom where laid-off employees are escorted by guards off the premises and bloggers are replacing guys like Lopez. You do have to wonder, though, if a blog about Ayers would have anywhere near the impact of Lopez's column. Doubt it."

No matter how wide-read a blog is, it still won't have the impact of a newspaper, and I'm kind of glad about that.

Don't Crowd Whoopi

2009-04-15T11:39:00.006-04:00

The first time I glanced down to the end of my row at the surprisingly adorable Rock of Ages last night, I thought the woman in the red shirt and blue jeans looked an awful lot like Whoopi Goldberg. It took only a few more minutes, and another glance, before I realized it was Whoopi Goldberg, looking great and trying (unsuccessfully) to blend it.

She was sitting on the aisle, there was an empty seat next to her, a person sitting in the third seat and an unoccupied fourth seat. (I was in seat five.) Everything was rocking along until the arrival of the latecomers, those folks who thought the show started at 8 instead of 7. A couple was erroneously directed to the two separate empty seats in our aisle, and when the man tried to sit down in the empty seat next to Whoopi she gently but firmly refused to let him plop himself down there. He got up to go, as did the woman, who had already sat down next to me, and she didn't make as graceful an exit. After she scooted by Whoopi she fell right down into the aisle.

Fortunately, this wasn't a performance of Desire Under the Elms, so one couldn't easily tell if the banging was coming from the stage or the audience. Another lesson in the importance of arriving on time and giving celebrities their elbow room.

What Would Audrey Do?

2009-04-08T11:58:00.005-04:00

Why is it so hard for musical theater writers to create shows in which something vital is at stake? And to put that something vital onstage? Yes, all good musicals do contain an element of fantasy, but the ones that work are grounded in reality. And I'm really not that hard to please when it comes to musicals. If interesting characters sing a few nice songs and entertain me, I'm generally happy.

Which is why the Transport Group's homage to Audrey Hepburn, Being Audrey, was so disappointing. (My Time Out New York review.) On paper, the seeds for a good story are there: a woman struggles to reinvent herself after tragedy strikes. But rather than show her travails and perhaps call on Audrey Hepburn's grace and charm to help her through them, the play consists mostly of her interacting with fantasy characters from films. Because these aren't people she has any actual relationships with, it's hard to become invested in what happens.

Quite a contrast from the dream sequence in the electric revival of Hair that I caught (with my mother, no less!) on Saturday, or even the dream ballet in Oklahoma! where we take a brief respite from reality to venture into a character's mind in a way that only musical theater can. In those instances we're already familiar with the characters and their dilemmas, and they're not escaping reality, they're pushing their struggles to their breaking point before the show reaches its denouement.

Happiness is …

2009-04-01T12:22:00.008-04:00

Don't even get me started on the unjustness of a universe that forces you to pick only one moment from your life to live in for all eternity. You're beloved grandmother died when you were 15, but you didn't meet the love of your life until you turned 30? Too bad, you can't spend the afterlife with both of them, so choose!

But even if you accept that life-after-death scenario, Happiness, the new Susan Stroman-John Weidman-Michael Korie-Scott Frankel musical that I reviewed for Time Out New York, still has more than its share of disappointing moments and textbook characters. Even a ballad that a man sings to his AIDS-stricken partner feels canned, with obligatory Fire Island references thrown in. And of course there's Brooklyn girl whose eternal moment takes place on Coney Island. (Is there any other Brooklyn locale where life-altering events can occur?)

The most evocative numbers involved Phyllis Somerville reliving a memory of first love circa World War II and Fred Applegate singing about sitting in the bleacher seats during the 1954 World Series for Willie Mays' catch. The most disappointing: the number sung by the married Jewish/Chinese couple (Robert Petkoff, Pearl Sun), who quiz one another with flashcards about about the other's religious and cultural traditions in preparation for family gatherings. That's the moment they want to live in for all eternity? C'mon! I think most couples, regardless of their outward differences, would have picked a moment that simply expressed the love they shared, not emphasized the things that made them different. That's the main reason why this show left me so emotionally unconnected. It focused too much on character "types" and didn't allow its characters simply to be individuals.

High School Musical

2009-03-23T11:10:00.003-04:00

The story of the Southern California high school whose production of Rent was canceled in February, only to be reinstated a couple of weeks later, is really turning ugly and divisive. Now the ACLU has gotten involved on behalf of a female student who allegedly received rape and death threats from male students.

That's enough to sour a teenage thespian's memory of her high school days for years to come. But as more musicals with potentially controversial content like Hairspray and Spring Awakening become available for high school productions, I'll be interested to see how communities respond to schools wanting to stage these show.

Thinking back to my own senior high musical days, to borrow a phrase from the learned Alex Rodriguez, things were more loosey-goosey back then. When I was a sophomore, my public high school staged the moderately racy Sweet Charity (they're not whores, they're dance-hall hostesses!), and two years later we did Grease (both of which featured moi in small but pivotal roles).

For Grease, we poked holes in the bottom of beer cans and drained them, so that the tops could still be popped during the show. But there were no herbal cigarettes; we used the real thing. (Fortunately, I didn't have to light up.) I still remember the surprised look on my mother's face when I told her that the cigarette were the real thing.

That Rent can cause such controversy in 2009 makes me feel like we were such trailblazers at Allen High School. (And apparently, they still are. A couple of years ago the spring musical was Jekyll & Hyde.) Although we were all public school students, we came from diverse socioeconmic backgrounds and never had a problem coming together as a team. Of course, our musicals didn't have any openly gay characters, and although many gay students were involved in the shows, nobody was particularly out in those days. No matter how much has changed in the last 20 years, where teenagers are concerned, sexual identity, in life or in art, will never be an easy topic.

Help Me, Hedda

2009-02-26T17:20:00.005-05:00

During the second scene of the Roundabout Theatre's flat and ill-conceived revival of Hedda Gabler, I started thinking about brighter days. My mind kept straying to memories of all the wonderful shows I'd seen featuring the talented cast and creative team whose work seemed so lifeless: Mary-Louise Parker in Proof, Michael Cerveris in great Sondheim shows like Assassins and Sweeney Todd, Paul Sparks in Blackbird and a slew of other Adam Rapp plays, director Ian Rickson's terrific production of The Seagull, playwright Christopher Shinn's fantastic Four.

How could so many talented people go so far astray? I've heard from a reliable source that problems started early on in rehearsals. Hedda Gabler is one of the shows I reviewed for Cititour.com; one that pleasantly surprised me in a lot of ways is Pal Joey.

So far, though, I'd have to say that the best shows I've seen in 2009 are the previously mentioned Becky Shaw, the wonderfully dynamic Uncle Vanya, starring Denis O'Hare at CSC and the Atlantic's finely honed Cripple of Inishmaan, a holdover from last year. I didn't seen the much maligned original Off-Broadway production, but about 10 years ago I caught the show, starring Fred Koehler, the kid from Kate & Allie, at the Geffen during a trip to Los Angeles. A good production, but not as intimate or stirring as the Garry Hynes one currently on stage. And I'd forgotten the many plot twists that unfold in the final scene.

Art the L.A. Way

2009-02-18T13:33:00.002-05:00

Got a kick out of this recent article — with slideshow and video — from the L.A. Times about the fabulously fun Downtown Art Walk. Until a trip to Los Angeles in November, I hadn't spent much time in Downtown, except to see a couple of plays at the Taper. But I'd heard quite a bit about the area's resurgence from office buildings and hotels to art galleries and (very!) pricey lofts and wanted to do something that was definitely off-the-beaten tourist track.

A friend had warned me that it was quite a scene, but I thought he just meant by California standards. I couldn't imagine a savvy New Yorker like me would be particularly stunned. Oh, was I wrong. You may notice that very little of the visuals involve people actually looking at art, and that was largely my experience. Not that I didn't want to, but with so much music, activity, wine and people around, I was suffering from sensory overload. When I passed a young man balancing a live black cat on his shoulders I knew it was time to go home.

Actually, my favorite part of the evening had been an earlier trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art on Grand Avenue, where I first got a look at art-viewing L.A. style. I was comfortably dressed in jeans and sensible shoes, my usual attire for an activity that requires copious amounts of walking, and I soon noticed most of the 20-somethings around me looked like they were right out of Central Casting: Women wore heels and short skirts, men had the perfect hipster hats. The whole environment was easily as photogenic as the exhibits themselves.

A Little Night Whedon?

2009-02-09T11:14:00.010-05:00

I shouldn't have been surprised that Stephen Sondheim's name came up in the "Dollhouse" panel at Comic-Con on Sunday. (I was there only for professional reasons, of course!) Famed "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon, there to unveil his new Fox TV series, is a known admirer — and they're both artists who inspire cultish worship. A woman who'd seen Whedon wax about Sondheim at a panel four years ago in honor of the consumate musical theater composer-lyricist's 75th birthday wanted to know if he aspired to adapt and direct a Sondheim musical for the screen, and if so, which one.

Whedon was quite enthusiastic about the prospect, although he noted with some regret that the musical that most appealed to him was recently filmed by Tim Burton — "Sweeney Todd." Still, he didn't rule out the possibility of doing his own version somewhere down the line — which prompted a cry of "James Marsters as Sweeney Todd!" from an audience member. His second choice? Not "Assassins," which would have been my guess, but the wistful and romantic "A Little Night Music."

"I want to be on Broadway," he added, and broke into a few lines of Sondheim's "Broadway Baby." And Broadway could really use Whedon's passion, smarts and talent right now. Dr. Horrible meets Buffy on the Great White Way, perhaps?

This week I vow to find the time to re-watch Whedon's Internet musical "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," starring another Sondheim follower, Neil Patrick Harris. You should too.

Seeger & Springsteen

2009-01-19T13:23:00.006-05:00

In case anyone missed Sunday's inaugural festivities, I highly recommend taking a look at Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen's inspiring rendition of "This Land Is Your Land." Although I hadn't sung or even thought about the lyric in years, I was amazed at how quickly it came back to me as the music played.

Beyond whetting my appetite for Tuesday's inauguration, it also transported back to my kindergarten days during the U.S. Bicentennial. At the end of the school year we put on a pageant celebrating Amercia's 200th birthday, for which we learned and sung various patriotic ditties. I vividly recall stomping around with a toy rifle on my shoulder, singing "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again." But my favorite memory is the grand finale, when we all stood on the risers and belted out "This Land Is Your Land," to our enthusiastic parents, though only the first couple of verses. There was nothing about "relief offices" in the lyric we learned, and I'm glad I was able to hold onto my innocence about those things for at least a little bit longer.