Author: Joe

Currently, there is a deluge of sharp political humor, for good reason.  John Oliver.  Stephen Colbert.  Samantha Bee.  Most recently Tina Fey’s sheetcake rant.  And on and on.  That’s because the target(s) are big, obvious and, well, it’s oh so easy to stick the landing.  Still, sometimes I want to laugh out loud without being reminded of the shit show that is our government.  When that time arrives (and it is now), head to the Lyceum Theater for The Play That Goes Wrong.  It is hilarious from start to finish.

A 2015 Olivier Award winner for Best New Comedy, this play was created by Mischief Theater and is still running in the West End.  Like another classic British farce, Noises Off, the hijinks are structured as a play within a play but with character development replaced by nonstop tomfoolery.  This time it’s “The Murder at Haversham Manor,”  a slightly run down English manor house with a dead body at the top of Act I.  Think Agatha Christie meets Monty Python in a bad play performed very badly.  If it can go wrong, it does.  The audience with whom I saw this play laughed hard and very, very often.

Everyone in the cast is funny with Dave Hearn’s performance as Cecil Haversham my frontrunner for best in show.  Nigel Hook deservedly won the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design of a Play.  The set not only gives the actors the platform to be hilarious, it sometimes even upstages them as if it were a character unto itself.  If you are not a fan of farce, slapstick humor or broad physical comedy, perhaps stay away.  If you are, get your tickets and have a great fun night at the theater.  Even the Playbill goes wrong.  Loved it.

www.broadwaygoeswrong.com

Produced off-Broadway in 1991 and later made into a film with Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton and Leonardo DiCaprio, Marvin’s Room has been exhumed (or buried for good) by the Roundabout Theater on Broadway this summer.  Here are the essentials:  Marvin, unseen throughout, is dying and his daughter Bessie (Lili Taylor) has chosen to live in Florida to take care of him and his wife for the last twenty years.  She now has leukemia.  An estranged sister and her kids take a trip to see if there is a bone marrow match.  Who did the right thing and who did the wrong thing?  All of this is framed in sort of an absurdist comedy that includes a wisecracking doctor and mostly unfunny one liners.

A small, intimate character play thrust on a large stage does not help at all.  The actors are lost amidst the space.  I was in Orchestra Row F and had to concentrate hard to hear what they were saying despite the fact that much of the time the cast is downstage.  On the way out, people were talking about not being able to hear key speeches.  The set was oddly spacious with a turntable that sometimes moved chairs and benches two or three feet during scenes for no discernible reason at all.  When you notice how many times the actor’s faces are not lit because another person is in the way, it’s hard to praise the lighting design.

The only performance I enjoyed was the troubled son Hank, played by Jack DiFalco who at least developed a full character, one who is in a mental institution for burning the family house down.  (Yes, really.)  The principles were just milling about and, in many cases, mumbling.  The New York Times review of Janeane Garofalo’s performance called her “such a brilliant underplayer that I could hardly tell the difference between Lee’s awfulness and her kindness.”  Bullshit.  The only possible way this play could work is for everyone to be ACTING, in capital letters.  This is not subtle stuff.   This is a play where a costumed animal character rescues Bessie when she faints at Disney World.   (Yes, really.)

The blame for this production of Marvin’s Room has to lie firmly with the director, Anne Kauffman, who has done fine, if not exceptional, work in past seasons that I enjoyed;  Marjorie Prime, Detroit, Sundown Yellow Moon and Belleville.  An unfortunate Broadway directorial debut in a production that can only be graded as poor.

www.roundabouttheater.org

From Wikipedia:  “Nineteen eighty-four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel published in 1949 by English author George Orwell.  The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation.”

Adapted and directed by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan, 1984 lands on Broadway after it debuted in the West End in 2013.  The play has received a lot of press, noting that it’s making theatergoers faint, vomit, scream at the actors from their seats, and get in fights.  I saw none of that but I will add that a young lady turned to her mom after it was over and said, “sorry, I thought this was a musical.”  1984 does include rough scenes, albeit brilliantly executed and unforgettable.

An inherently violent and disturbing book has been brought to three dimensional life and the result is incredibly theatrical, uncannily in the present time and, yes, uncomfortable.  Adventurous types will be rewarded by watching a knockout performance by Tom Sturridge as Winston, the cautious rebel at the center of this story.  On Saturdays, 1984 is performed at 5:00 and 9:00.  Hard to imagine pulling this role off eight times a week, no less twice in one evening.  Bravo.

Olivia Wilde (Julia) and Reed Birney (O’Brien) co-star in this production, both inhabiting this world and their characters with restrained intensity.  I enjoyed watching the entire cast, with Wayne Duvall (Parsons) and Michael Potts (Charrington) as particular standouts.  The set design, use of projections and lighting is top drawer.

The publication of 1984 popularized the adjective Orwellian, which describes official deception, secret surveillance and manipulation of recorded history by a totalitarian or authoritarian state.  Winston’s job, as a matter of fact, is to rewrite the historical record so that it always supports the party line. Written in 1948, George Orwell brought us the phrase “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.”   The time for this exceptional play is now.  Run.

www.thehudsonbroadway.com