Category: Broadway Reviews

George Bernard Shaw wrote Saint Joan in 1923, three years after Pope Benedict XV canonized her.  Considered one of his masterworks, Shaw went on to win the Nobel Prize in literature two years later.  The Manhattan Theater Club has mounted a serious revival for Broadway starring Condola Rashad, a three time Tony nominee for Stick Fly, The Trip to Bountiful and A Doll’s House, Part 2.  I’ve been fortunate to see all of these performances (and also the Pulitzer Prize winning Ruined).  Having read this play in graduate school and never having seen it staged, I was looking forward to watching this always excellent actress bring Joan to life on stage.

Saint Joan is the well known, oft-told story of Joan of Arc, a medieval military figure who helps turn the tide of French losses on the battlefield against the English.  She is following the voices from God in her head which tell her to lead the troops to victory for France and crown the Dauphin as King.  In this interpretation of the play, Joan is neither a madwoman filled with rage nor a demur heroic wallflower.  She is clear-eyed, focused and matter-of-fact. Never for a moment do you believe Ms. Rashad’s Joan has any doubt about her mission.

What makes the play thematically rich is that Shaw wrote characters who are not simply villainous.  They are also pragmatic and calculated.  After her trial she is burned at the stake, largely due to her rising popularity which often follows when common people unite around a successful leader gaining power.  In 1429, the English and the Catholic Church found a way to bond against a common enemy named Joan.  Was she a heretic or were her visions real?  Either way, the church leaders were threatened.  The English, satirically painted as idiots by the Irish Shaw, just wanted her captured and killed.

How one sees this play largely depends on your worldview.  Do you believe in saints and miracles?  Is this a tale of politics and hypocrisy?  Centuries after Joan was sentenced to death by religious leaders, the church changed its mind.  The will of god or a guilty conscience?  This play contains a dream epilogue occurring 25 years after Joan’s death.  I think Saint Joan (the play) might be the grandmother to Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.  Both use fantastical elements to make us think hard about what we believe and why.

Many aspects of this particular production are quite fine but the play rather than the staging is the meat here to devour.  My favorite performance was Jack Davenport’s Earl of Warwick, a manipulative and ruthless man.  Joan is a threat to the system.  A church trial is a means to slander her and make her go away disgraced, rather than as a martyr.  You also have to consider whether or not Joan was sane.  She lived in a world where everyone was out for themselves above all else, trying to preserve the status quo.  Sound familiar?  Saint Joan truly is an excellent play.

www.saintjoanbroadway.com

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www.manhattantheatreclub.com

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/angelsinamerica

My first encounter with Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, the masterwork by Tony Kushner, was the Signature Theater’s revival in 2010.  I have vivid memories of a hauntingly fragile yet regally tough Michael Urie as Prior Walter and Bill Heck’s completely realized closeted Mormon Joe Pitt.  An off-Broadway production, it was certainly more intimate than I imagine the original productions were.  Currently on Broadway is the big scale revival with Nathan Lane (The Producers, The Front Page) as Roy Cohn  and Andrew Garfield (Death of a Salesman) as Prior Walter.  On second viewing, the play is beyond grand in scope.  It is epic, bold, hilarious, aggressively theatrical, wildly overwritten, audacious, heartbreakingly tender and Shakespearean in scope.  Angels in America is a great play.

In the beginning (intentional religious symbolism inserted here), Prior Walter learns that he has AIDS and with his live in boyfriend they are facing the illness.  The year is 1985.  Thousands are dying of this disease and we are smack dab in the middle of Reagan era conservatism.  A Mormon couple from Salt Lake now live in New York; she is afraid to go outside, he is a closeted homosexual.  The famously evil lawyer Roy Cohn is a major character, dripping with venom.  The playing field of this play is immense and tackles politics, religion, love, intolerance, coping, revenge, sanity, health care, acceptance and forgiveness.

The two parts, Millenium Approaches and Perestroika, require seven and one half hours of commitment.  I did not opt to see both parts in one day but instead saw them in the same week and I was happy with that choice.  I was riveted throughout as was the audience, even through some of kookier, more overwrought sections, notably in Perestroika.  Everyone in the cast is very good.  I particularly loved  Susan Brown.  She played a rabbi, a doctor, a mother, a homeless woman, amongst other roles.  Many characters inhabit multiple roles that this “fantasia” accommodates brilliantly.  James McArdle’s Louis and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett’s Belize were especially fine portrayals.

Whenever I revisit something that has an indelible imprint in memory, there are inevitable comparisons.  In this version, I felt that the Mormom wife Harper, played by Denise Gough (People, Places & Things), was too intensely crazed.  That choice played beautifully in the more fantastical sections but strained credulity (and focus) during the intimate scenes.  The whole production design, directed by Marianne Elliott (War Horse, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), was not my cup of tea.  There were definitely some terrific effects and scene changes.  A big “thing” (for lack of a better name) hovers over the stage throughout both parts.  When it finally is utilized, it’s a completely ho-hum moment.

Let’s not quibble too much though.  Angels in America is a classic piece of theater, standing the test of time.  It looks back at when we had oppression, intolerance, polarizing politics and religious fervor.  Maybe AIDS has been contained, but isn’t is amazing how far we have not come.  The angels and their humans, as imperfect as they may be, still require our utmost attention.  There is still more great work to be done.

www.angelsbroadway.com

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Written by Mark Medoff, Children of a Lesser God opened on Broadway in 1980 and won the Tony Award for Best Play and for both of its lead actors, John Rubenstein and Phylis Frelich.  The  play was originally written for Ms. Frelich, a deaf actress, based on her relationship with her husband.  After a successful two year run it was turned into a movie, nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture, with Marlee Matlin winning a Best Actress Oscar.  Not having seen either, the pedigree of this story promised some acting fireworks in this new Broadway revival.

Joshua Jackson (Showtime’s The Affair) is James Leeds, a new teacher at a school for the deaf.  Lauren Ridloff is Sarah Norman, now a janitor at the school, having lived there since she was a young child.  He is idealistic and earnest about opening up the world to deaf people.  She is reluctant to speak or even read lips.  What follows is a complicated relationship about communication and individuality.  The play also includes some contrived subplots involving other students and thematic overload with an older hardened teacher and a do-gooder lawyer.  When the play centers its focus on the core relationship, Children of a Lesser God is at its best.

The scenic design is sharply cool; a blue landscape with orange accents that suggest a memory play travelling through doors of understanding and also doors of separation and isolation.  As the teacher, Mr. Jackson is rarely offstage.  He is our narrator here who simultaneously speaks lines while also signing and interpreting signing.  The performance is grounded, natural and completely real.  Ms. Norman is effectively emoting without speaking yet we still are able to hear her thoughts and try to grasp a deaf and mute life.  Why does she not want to cross the chasm and make connections to the speaking world?

Chemistry between these two central characters is critical here and both actors deliver on that promise.  Intellectually, I enjoyed this play as an opportunity to consider whether a deaf world is oppressed or just different.  Theatrically, I enjoyed watching the acting, particularly the leads, and their approach to delivering this challenging material.  Emotionally, however, I did not really get engaged so by the end, all of this fell a little flat for me.  A very good clinical and analytical study with some great acting roles but not exceptional enough to be considered a top tier play.

www.childrenofalessergodbroadway.com

Off-Broadway’s successful Second Stage is now also on Broadway with a $64 million renovation of the Helen Hayes Theater.  Never before have I seen so many people complain out loud about the seating. “I’m claustrophobic,” one woman behind me said.  Everyone’s shoulders seemed wider than the chairs.  Arm rests probably couldn’t balance an elbow but that’s not really physically possible without contortionist skills and very friendly seatmates.  Picture airline seating and then put more chairs in.  That’s the feeling.  Putting that aside, the Broadway debut for this company is Lobby Hero, a 2001 play by Kenneth Lonergan.

Michael Cera (This is Our Youth) plays Jeff, a 27 year old security guard working the night shift in a residential building in New York City.  This job is an attempt to finally put his life in order.  Against his better judgment, his supervisor William (Bryan Tyree Henry) discusses a personal matter with Jeff.  The only other two characters are Bill (Chris Evans) and Dawn (Bel Powley), the neighborhood police.  Bill is the seasoned vet and Dawn is the rookie, just three months on the job.  Everyone is flawed in this absorbing play.

Lobby Hero is certainly commenting on working class New Yorkers but is much more philosophical than that.  Using comedy, drama and very memorable storytelling, these four individuals express their points of view.  Throughout the play, you may find your opinions about them changing.  The acting is first rate.  In choosing an imperfect cop for his Broadway debut, Chris Evans plays against the squeaky clean Captain America superhero from his films.  He is excellent, fully committed to the menacing spirit which ignites the plot.  Like everyone in this play, his character’s judgment is under the microscope.

As our central character, Michael Cera’s performance captures all the nerdiness and loneliness of this oddball loser who wants to be a winner in life.  Maybe that is true.  Lobby Hero is so good that you cannot be sure of anything.  Bryan Tyree Henry as the boss and family man was perhaps my favorite performance.  A decision he makes frames the moral debate of this play, one that is complicated by real world concerns.  I’ve now seen three of Mr. Lonergan’s plays, including this season’s outstanding Hangmen.  I thought this one should have ended before the last scene but that’s a quibble considering the exquisite shades of gray on display in this outstanding production.

www.2st.com

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Lucy Kirkwood’s play, The Children, arrived on Broadway after an acclaimed run in London with its original cast.  The action takes place in a small cottage isolated near the British coastline.  A retired couple has retreated here after an environmental disaster has left their home uninhabitable.  A woman from their past stops by.  Why?  How are the children, she asks.  We quickly learn that a nuclear power plant has been severely compromised by an earthquake and the resultant tsunami.

In The Children, Ms. Kirkwood gives us plenty to think about.  What are the responsibilities of our decisions as human beings to our planet and future generations?  What is the best way to have lived one’s life?  Does homemade parsnip booze taste terrible but really get you drunk?  Are the cows the couple own behind the exclusion zone ok?  Does exercise and yoga effectively fill one’s time late in life?  These and many more topics swirl around this slow building mystery of a play until we approach the ending and the real reason these three are together on this day.

Since this play is built like a mystery with deepening revelations along the way, there is a lot of space to fill.  Thankfully the three actors here, Francesca Annis (Rose, the visitor), Ron Cook and Deborah Findlay, are all riveting in their portrayal of simplistic, complicated, realistic and conflicted characters.  That seems to come with age and mortality looming.

James McDonald beautifully directed this play; it’s an odd combination of scary, comforting, tragic and hopeful.  I’ve seen two of his previous efforts (Cloud Nine at Atlantic Theater and Cock at the Duke) which were both outstanding productions with creative staging and actors excelling in their roles.  The set design for this play is also memorable.  The cottage is visibly askew at an angle, maybe fifteen degrees.  Everything is off kilter in The Children and the result is not only excellent theater but a pile of themes to ponder well after the curtain comes down.

www.mtc/the children.com