Back to Homeland

Homeland promo

You know those halcyon days that dominate the early stages of a relationship, be it with new friend, colleague or lover? They seem to carry a golden glow of perfection. Then something happens...maybe an outburst of inappropriate anger...maybe a broken promise...whatever it is, you discover they have flaws, and they go from extraordinary to ordinary status.

So goes the saga of my love affair with Homeland. As I work my way through the season-two DVDs, I've had to accept that this drama is not the beacon of perfection it was on its maiden voyage.

Things were going along just fine until episode three. Even Damian Lewis's stellar acting couldn't make me swallow the plotline that sends Brody to Gettysburg to take the tailor who made his bomb vest to a safe house. Brody is supposed to be Abu Nazir's secret weapon; his access to CIA officials and the Vice President are key to Nazir's desire to exact revenge on the U.S. Why would he risk putting him out in public with someone the CIA is chasing, especially in a car with a license plate that could be linked to Brody?

Lewis, as usual, was a whirlwind of mad-eyed intensity, panting and sweating as he got ever more bloody and dirty and the situation spiraled out of control. Nevertheless, those scenes marked the first time that I ever laughed at something I wasn't meant to on the show.

And then...two episodes later came one called "Q&A," written by the late, great Henry Bromell. Brody is arrested and spends most of the hour facing Claire Danes's Carrie in an interrogation room. It showed the series at its best. Lewis has got to be one of the most convincing criers on TV, and his scenes with Danes are riveting.

So I'm back in love with Homeland--and also with the person who created the promo above, which beautifully conveys the enigma that is Brody and Carrie's fascination with him--at least until the next DVD arrives from Netflix.

Romeo the Right Way

Daphne Rubin-Vega and Elizabeth Olsen in Romeo & Juliet.

CSC's nervy, nontraditional Romeo & Juliet, which I caught at a Sunday matinee a month after I saw the current Broadway revival, is a welcome surprise. I didn't expect it to be universally embraced, but I'm surprised it was lambasted by so many critics. I'll take Bosnian director Tea Alagic's carefully conceived interpretation over the one full of sound and fury that's on Broadway.

Don't Go to New York, Young Playwright

Christine Toy Johnson and Bernardo Cubria in Philip Goes Forth.

The scion of a wealthy family moves to New York to become a playwright. That's the premise of George Kelly's Philip Goes Forth, as well as the dramatist's own biography. But while things went well for Kelly—who wrote The Torch-Bearers, The Show-Off and won a Pulitzer for Craig's Wife, in addition to being Grace's uncle—Philip's fortunes go in a different (and not especially interesting) direction.

A Hell of Blessing's Making

Edward James Hyland and David Deblinger in User's Guide.

How can a play that features a 9/11 terrorist fucking a Ponzi-scheme master in ass be as tame and trite as Lee Blessing's A User's Guide to Hell, featuring Bernard Madoff? Given the current state of U.S.-Russia relations, Project Y Theatre might have had more success reviving the Tony-nominated author's much more considerate A Walk in the Woods.

You can watch a scene from the original production, starring Sam Waterston and Robert Prosky, starting at 5:50.

Past Doesn't Come Alive

Tony Naumovski and Elizabeth Jasicki in Final Analysis.

Should I ever be lucky enough to get on the TARDIS, time-travel back to early-20th-century Vienna, and meet Freud, Mahler and others of their ilk, I would hope they wouldn't be as dull as they seem in the Off Broadway play Final Analysis.

Landing a Grudge

Patricia Richardson and P.J. Benjamin in I Forgive You, Ronald Reagan.

I don't forgive Ronald Reagan, or Margaret Thatcher, or any of those greedy conservative '80s politicians, for that matter. But I am more charitable about the faults of I Forgive You, Ronald Reagan, John S. Anastasi's well-intentioned look at a fired air-traffic controller trying to get past his long-simmering grudge against our 40th president.

Burning up the Tango Floor

Karina Smirnoff and Maksim Chmerkovskiy in Forever Tango.

Forever Tango...whether you see that as a promise or a threat all depends on your affinity for the hot Latin dance and those who perform it. Mine wasn't strong enough to be sustained by this rather conventional return to Broadway for the popular show, but it's worth noting that two of the hot-footed dancers burning up the boards of Walter Kerr Theatre are Maksim and Karina from Dancing with the Stars, who last Broadway hoofing was a couple of summers ago in Burn the Floor. And it was cool to do my first Broadway review for Time Out New York.