Category: Broadway Reviews

When Mark Rylance comes to town, I get tickets.  I’ve seen most of his performances in New York starting with his Tony winning turn in the farce Boeing Boeing as a bumbling deadpan clueless best friend from Wisconsin.  He was screamingly hilarious.  Then came another Tony for Jerusalem as a drunken-party-man living in a trailer in the woods and taking on the world in a colossus of a performance, one of my favorites ever.  Add in Broadway turns in La Bete, Twelfth Night (as Olivia) and the title role in Richard III plus Nice Fish at St. Ann’s Warehouse – so yes, I’m a huge fan.

Understandable then to be excited that he is back on stage here in Farinelli and the King playing the Spanish mad King Philippe V.  The play was written by his wife, Claire Van Kampen.  The stage is set as a grand presentation of a courtly theater with some audience members seated onstage and lit by candlelight as in “back in the day.”  So disappointing then to sit through a play in which nothing really happens other than some musings from a mad king, an underdeveloped story about his wife and a countertenor who sings arias beautifully (and arguably too often).  The singing and the jarringly odd contemporary language occasionally scattered throughout did not hide the lack of substance.

Despite the rousing standing ovation from the audience in the performance I attended, the entire evening is frankly dull and unfortunately pointless.  Was this about music as a healing force?  Art and fame?  Being a King is a bummer?  Castrated singers are hot?  Some combination of all that?  As there was no story arc to latch onto perhaps due to thin relationships between the characters, it was hard to tell.  This seems to me, therefore, to be an exercise in watching Mr. Rylance act.  He opens the play with a fishing pole in one hand and a goldfish bowl in the other.  Mad, I tell you, mad.  Farinelli and the King was a waste of time, sad to say.

www.farinelliandthekingbroadway.com

Steve Martin, playwright.  Amy Schumer and Keegan-Michael Key, Broadway debuts.  Comedy, yes.  Laugh out loud moments, yes.  Underdeveloped play, definitely yes.

The setting is Ojai, California in 1993 where the meteor shower of the title is scheduled to occur that evening.  Corky (Schumer) and Norm (Jeremy Shamos, perfectly porous) are a California married couple about to host another couple for an evening of meteor gazing and banter.  First, they have some pre-wine (doesn’t count!) which sets the tone for them and for the audience.  We quickly learn that they are stereotypical Californians aggressively in touch with their feelings.  Who is coming over?  Gerald (Key) and Laura (Laura Benanti).  What follows is broad comedic hijinks, much of it very funny.

Everyone in the cast gets their moment to shine and make us laugh.  The role of Corky is a perfect fit for Ms. Schumer, who admirably does not break character during her meteor shower viewing scene with Laura.  The always excellent Ms. Benanti (Gypsy, She Loves Me) is sexy, devilish and hilarious.  Mr. Key’s performance is assured, confident and very big which I think is needed to keep this farce a little off-balance.

Advertised as a one act, 90 minute play, Meteor Shower barely clocks in at 1:15.  As a result, there is a sketchiness to all of this inspired lunacy rather than a fully realized piece.  Minor example:  there is a brief, funny drug scene that goes nowhere.  Like the astronomical phenomena itself, Meteor Shower is a starry, bright, fun diversion but it’s over in a flash.

www.meteoronbroadway.com

“An Experiment with Time” was a widely read 1927 book by J. W. Dunne, a British soldier, aeronautical engineer and philosopher.  One of the theories he posited was that all time is happening simultaneously.  Past, present and future are one and linear time is the only way in which human consciousness is able to perceive this.  J. B. Priestly used these ideas in his plots for three “Time Plays,” including An Inspector Calls, his most famous work.

Time and the Conways takes place in both 1919 and 1937 Britain between the World Wars.  The play opens with Kay’s 21st birthday and a grand party at their home in well-to-do Manningham.  (The original Kay on Broadway in 1938 was Jessica Tandy.)  Four sisters and two sons, one of whom just returns from the war, are still living at home with their mother (Downton Abbey’s Elizabeth McGovern).  While this is certainly a family drama filled with sibling rivalries and emotional baggage, thematically it is much bigger than that.  Priestley also comments on Britain between the wars, class privilege, socialism, life choices and missed opportunities with a dash of unrequited love.  Add in a beast of a mother, a game of charades and a whiff of metaphysical time travelling.  I loved this play, its naturalistic style and its structure.

Everyone in this talent-rich cast was good and the staging by Rebecca Taichman (last year’s Tony winner for Indecent) effectively presented the mundane and the mysterious.  Particular standouts for me were Gabriel Ebert as Alan (Tony winner for Matilda), Charlotte Parry as Kay (Tony winner for The Real Thing), Matthew James Thomas as Robin (Pippin, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark) and Anna Baryshnikov as Carol (film debut in Manchester by the Sea).

As Ernest, Steven Boyer was just as intense as his unforgettable performance in Hand to God.  His character is an entrepreneurial climber from the lower class who desperately wants to meet the Conways.  A study in simmering physicality, perhaps Mr. Boyer’s character is Priestley’s commentary on British society.  As time passes and dreams are realized, why is there still just pent up anger and unhappiness?  Time and the Conways is rich with characters and ideas.  A rewarding piece of theater and a Broadway revival well worth seeking out.

www.roundabouttheatre.org

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