Category: Broadway Reviews

Leaving Broadway’s Booth Theater after seeing the often very funny Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, “Radio Song” by R.E.M. came to mind.  The particular lyric:  “the world is collapsing/ around our ears/ I turned up the radio/ But I can’t hear it.”  The song was a call to action for artists and DJs to communicate more important messages to the masses.  In this comedy, Taylor Mac has created a similar rallying cry to artists about the pervasive savagery within our world.  “Do we pause or spur it on with centuries of applause?”

Having never seen or read the Shakespeare play, I decided to watch the Julie Taymor film Titus in preparation.  The film is overlong; intermittently fantastic, campy, violent and boring.  I am glad that I watched the movie before sitting down for this sequel.  While not a requirement, additional background adds some understanding (and fun) to these shenanigans.

Julie White plays the renamed Carol, a fairly small character in the original tragedy but part of a major scene.  Knowing her backstory adds to the merriment onstage.  She opens the play with an absolutely hilarious monologue which sets the tone for the raucous grotesquerie that follows.  In the smallest part, Ms. White nearly steals the show from her costars Nathan Lane and Kristen Nielsen.

When the curtain rises, the aftermath of war is everywhere.  Gary (Lane) was a clown but now has been assigned to the cleanup crew.  Dead bodies have accumulated.  He comes from a long line of clowning:  “it was inherited, like religions.”  Ms. Nielsen’s Janice is an experienced maid.  This current mess is “not my first massacre.”  She tutors Gary in the fine art of body disposal.

Santo Loquasto designed this set which is a character unto itself.  Dead bodies and limbs are everywhere.  Look, that one was really a stud!  The slaughtered women and children are hidden under a large tarp.  We don’t really need to see that.  Or do we?  Through this bawdy exercise, judy (Taylor Mac’s preferred pronoun) is going to make a lot of political points about the brutality of mankind and our passive acceptance.  R.E.M.’s “I turned up the radio” morphed into “I sat in my theater chair.”

Perhaps judy could not hear enough voices screaming out in the artist community.  A very successful performer who often performs in drag, judy was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for A 24-Decade History of Popular Music.  That extravaganza skewered the heteronormative narrative of America’s history.  Never-ending violence and oppression of all minorities were confronted in an anarchistic political convention replete with sequins and titillating humor.  That 24 hour show was an extraordinary achievement.

Filled with gallows humor, Gary contains many, many laughs.  In a metatheatrical way, judy has created the genre of a “fooling.”  Both the play and the characters who inhabit it are clowns putting on a show.  As directed by George C. Wolfe, the best individual moments slay.  The messaging is clear and appropriately in-your-face.  Unfortunately the proceedings occasionally get bogged down like a battalion tramping through a muddy quagmire.  The play loses focus and momentum at times.

The three performers work hard to bring this outrageousness to life.  Mr. Lane’s Gary is certainly a fool.  As a man, of course he is the most important person and naturally should be in charge.  Ms. Nielsen’s maid is darker, edgier, angrier and the more accomplished.  She is pissed off about her station in life.  The performance fuses her trademark acting style and line deliveries with a ludicrous situation.  Her character is probably the heart of the play; the window through which people see how the 1% impose themselves on society.

Then there is Julie White who shows us all how to get nominated for a Tony Award.  Obviously all of this talent has enabled Gary to be mounted on Broadway despite its downtown sensibility.  In a big traditional venue, Taylor Mac has put our society and our artists on trial.  judy cannot hear you.  Listen.  Laugh.  And, hopefully, be inspired to create art that speaks to today’s atrocities.  Dead bodies are simply a case of history repeating itself.

www.garyonbroadway.com

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On a Sunday night in January 2008, Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager Mark are in a hotel room.  The New Hampshire primary is two days away and the poll numbers look bad.  Mrs. Clinton complains that “the vultures are circling.”  Barack Obama has offered her a position as his running mate if she drops out of the race.  Hillary and Clinton, the new play by Lucas Hnath, is a fictionalized character study of this famous woman and what makes her tick.

We all know the general plot outline.  Hillary is running for President and will not succeed.  We will see her failed candidacy and her troubled marriage to Bill, the 42nd President of the United States and her philandering husband.  A story of ambition and drive in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, Hillary and Clinton is a thrilling dive into the head of this woman.  Covering a topic that has been exhaustively played out over and over again, it is hard to imagine how Mr. Hnath has mined comedic gold from this material.

Famously Bill flies into New Hampshire at his wife’s request, wreaking havoc in his wake.  He is not sure she should continue running for President telling her “don’t let them see you as a rotting corpse.”  She doesn’t have his personality, instead she is “cold, stubborn and guarded.”  With him playing attack dog by her side, they will be stronger. “Everyone wants a mommy.  Everyone wants a dog.  With us, they get both.”

While Hillary and Clinton deals with politics, the play is not a political one which takes sides. This is a play about a woman who does indeed come off as guarded.  This playwright conjures a glimpse inside her brain.  That view is neither flattering nor negative.  Better than that, it is believably detailed.  You feel sorry for her.  Her defensive fortress is understood.  When the pit bull appears baring her fangs, you recoil again.  This ninety minute play is so effective because we all have our long-held opinions about these people.

Barack Obama is the fourth character in this play but the tension he creates happens long before an appearance on stage.  Having placed third in the Iowa caucuses, Mrs. Clinton is reeling.  Her anointment to the highest office in our country is not so definite as she and her campaign would like to believe.  We’ve heard this all before and still it is impressively riveting stuff.

The action takes place in a laboratory-like shell of a hotel room nicely designed by Chloe Lamford.  As usual, Laurie Metcalf is terrific as Hillary.  The performance is emotionally rich and does not resort to mimicry at all.  At one point she is seated with Bill standing behind her.  I actually thought I saw Hillary’s face not Ms. Metcalf’s.  As her husband, John Lithgow is wonderfully annoying portraying the man whose glory days are well behind him.  This play makes a case for this couple as quintessential American opportunists but also as ravenously greedy, self-absorbed, power hungry loners.  Is there no hurdle they cannot climb?

After last year’s fantastic revival of Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, Joe Mantello has once again brought an intimate character study to remarkable life.  Zak Orth is unforgettable as the beleaguered campaign manager Mark.  Peter Francis James’ portrayal of President Obama is instantly recognizable and interestingly edgy.  All of these people are political sharks.  It’s just through different personality lenses that we see them.

Lucas Hnath is a supremely gifted playwright and the writing of this piece is so good that there is not one lull in the action.  Whatever your political persuasion, Hillary and Clinton is highly recommended.  The marquee states that the play is “primarily a comedy.”  If you are a political junkie and actually pay attention to presidential politics and the interminable slog through the primaries, this grand entertainment should equate to an Electoral College landslide.

www.hillaryandclintonbroadway.com

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Famous for being a great (or perhaps greatest) powerhouse role for an actor who can dominate a stage, King Lear arrives on Broadway with last year’s Tony winning Best Actress, Glenda Jackson in the title role.  At 82 years old, she does command a stage.  She goes about the business of descent into madness efficiently.  I cannot say hers is a Lear for the ages because the production is simply not good.

The stage is adorned with a garish gold lobby.  Miriam Buether did the scenic design.  A ruler with moralistically challenged daughters and son-in-laws conniving for their slice of the empire.  It’s so blatantly Trump Hotel that it is boring.  Too many productions this year are referencing the same target.  Original compositions by Philip Glass are played by four musicians underscoring a world of privilege.

One of the the Fool’s speeches proclaims:  “And bawds and whores do churches build; Then shall the realm of Albion/Come to great confusion.”  At the end of this damning soliloquy the Fool (Ruth Wilson) pulls up her pant legs to show socks with the American flag.  Exclamation point or thematic excess, your call.  Sam Gold directed this very uneven production.

King Lear is certainly juicy enough to satisfy if the acting rose above the setting.  That is not the case.  In an attempt to provide more gender neutrality to the casting, the usually fantastic Jayne Houdyshell portrays the Earl of Gloucester.  The performance is flat and her lines are flubbed all over the place.  With one of the moral centers of the play this ineffectively realized, there is a collapse which cannot be recovered.

Lear’s daughters Goneril (Elizabeth Marvel) and Regan (Aisling O’Sullivan) are a mixed bag of unrelated concepts.  Ms. Marvel’s characterization was fun and very contemporary.  Ms. O’Sullivan’s was one unearthed from various countries and different accents with more than a whiff of Desperate Housewives thrown in.  Why did Ms. Wilson play Cordelia and the Fool?

There are some pleasures to be enjoyed onstage through this long slog.  Pedro Pascal’s Edmund, the illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester, delivered a fully realized villain.  John Douglas Thompson was spot on as the king’s loyal and selfless aide.  In the role of banished son Edgar, Sean Carvajal was my favorite performance in both speech and physicality.  I have to add that Oswald’s death scene, as portrayed by Matthew Maher, was a high point.  The proceedings were so boring that the levity was a welcome relief.

Now for very important information.  If your tickets are located far to the right or left of the stage, you will miss key scenes.  I had trouble and there were at five people sitting to my right.  These were not “obstructed view” priced tickets.  Did no one think that the entire audience might want to experience this whole play?  It is not as if the directorial choice was so phenomenally interesting.  These scenes are essentially characters just sitting on a bench.  Dozens and dozens of theatergoers were unforgivably short changed.

I thought Glenda Jackson was truly marvelous in last year’s Three Tall Women.  Here she shows us all that she can run a difficult marathon and finish, if not win.  Overall, however, this production is a sorry mess and cannot be recommended.

www.kinglearonbroadway.com

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The 1976 Academy Award winning film Network was a broad satire on television, its news programming and society in general.  Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) has adapted Paddy Chayefsky’s celebrated screenplay for the stage.  What is perhaps most striking is that the story seems less satirical and more grounded in our current reality.  Imagine an America whose citizens want their television personalities to express their rage out loud.

According to anchorman Howard Beale, the world is a “demented slaughterhouse.”  His viewership is poor and he gets fired.  On his program, he announces a plan to kill himself on air the following week.  Ranting and raving about all of life’s “bullshit,” his ratings begin to increase.  He morphs into an angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisy of our times.  The people respond.  He may be off his rocker but good ratings equal good profits.

Bryan Cranston (All the Way, Breaking Bad) is riveting in the role that won Peter Finch a posthumous Oscar.  There is a scene where the camera is rolling and he cannot muster the focus, strength, courage or words to begin speaking.  It’s just dead air and a tormented face.  The television executives argue whether to cut him off.  They don’t and what eventually follows is a superlative rant for the ages.

Mr. Cranston is so good in the madman crazy sections that the latter stages of the play seem a tad too sane.  (I’ll admit that the story arc does seems quite believable today.)  Unfortunately much of what surrounds this enthralling performance is either innocuously bland or annoying distracting.  As  director, Ivo Van Hove often stages plays with multimedia projections.  For a show about the medium of television, this makes sense.  The parade of television commercials from the 1970’s is fun, especially when Mr. Cranston is offstage and you want something interesting to pay attention to.

On stage there are theatergoers on one side sitting at a bar.  Network backstage operations are filled with people, screens and electronics on the other side.  With much of Mr. Cranston’s performance projected on screen, there are studio employees milling about, often blocking the actors from view.  The recorded music and other assorted noises which blare out on speakers throughout the play are simply annoying after awhile.  I suppose the frenetic staging is supposed to be disarming and purposely unfocused.  The problem is that the excesses don’t cover up the weaknesses well enough.

The play as presented is over two hours without an intermission.  At least fifteen minutes could have been trimmed without any loss of style or substance.  The actors surrounding Mr. Cranston competently say their lines but real characters do not emerge.  As Diana Christensen, Tatiana Maslany (Mary Page Marlowe, Orphan Black) is not nearly as manipulative or ruthless as needed.  We don’t need to like her.  She is a villain and a climber.  Tony Goldwyn (Promises, Promises, Scandal) plays a bewildered Max Schumacher going through the motions of life without the necessary emotive conflicts to make us understand him.  His passions are spoken about but not evidenced.  (Their sex scene was hilarious though.)

After the curtain call, snippets from the swearing in ceremonies of United States’ Presidents are shown.  Images from more than half a century, finishing with Trump who is predictably booed.  This pandering to the theater audience is insipid.  Did the creative team think we needed this coda to draw parallels to now?

Arthur Jensen (Nick Wyman, excellent) appears as the wealthy network Chairman who convinces Howard Beale to become a television prophet. His scene is set on a high platform suggesting a godlike figure.  His worldview is not based on countries anymore but is a collage of corporations.  Presumably the Trump footage was intended to highlight that viewpoint in bold.

Network can be recommended as very good theater particularly notable for Bryan Cranston’s extraordinary performance.  If you don’t know the story from the film, that is another reason to go.  The show suffers a little from technological excess as the images become more important than the people.  It’s theatrical for sure but not necessarily more interesting (or disturbing) than what is broadcast on television every day.

www.networkbroadway.com

A debate over the history and meaning of negro spirituals enlivens a classroom in Choir Boy.  At a school for young black men, a student links the line “keep your eye on the plow” to the latter day “keep your eye on the prize” and, eventually and significantly, to “yes we can.”  Tarell Alvin McCraney won an Oscar for his screenplay for Moonlight.  His ability to write memorable lines for young people trying to figure out their path in life is in full display in this absorbing, beautifully acted production.

Pharus Jonathan Young is the student at the center of this story.  When the play begins he is singing the school’s theme song at the commencement ceremony for the graduating class.  A bully hurls some mean-spirited epithets his way, briefly throwing off his timing.  Pharus is effeminate and presumably gay.  Headmaster Morrow (an excellent Chuck Cooper) advises him to tone it down a bit.  In his final year of school, this uber-talented kid has now been put in charge of the choir.

The story which follows is a fairly typical coming of age story.  There’s the sensitive kid, a spoiled rich one with followers and the warmhearted jock.  These young men are telegraphed early.  What makes The Choir so interesting is its skill in weaving the drama of being an outsider.  The memories and passed down histories of centuries of slavery and hardship inform the men who inhabit this stage.  In today’s world, how does a gay teenager with big talent and even bigger dreams safely navigate their passage into adulthood with so much baggage to carry?

Jeremy Pope plays a powerfully complicated Pharus.  Equally endearing and maddeningly self-destructive, his youthful exuberance is fortified with an acerbic defensive wit.  We see this personality trait early on and we know there will be confrontation looming.  Mr. Pope’s performance is so completely realized that it never really appears to be acting.

The same can be said for the rest of this talented cast.  As Pharus’ roommate and compassionate jock, John Clay III nicely develops the one character who may be pointing humanity to the future.  The drama in this tale is punctuated with performances by the choirboys.  The songs are expertly rendered and comment on the themes contained in the play.  “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.”  “I got a rainbow tied around my shoulders.”

Austin Pendleton (perfect) arrives at the school and is the only white person in this play.  He is assigned to teach a liberal arts class meant to encourage thinking outside the box.  When these young men engage in debate about negro spirituals and what they mean today, the play explodes with ideas.  Tensions and youthful indiscretions populate this drama with effectively uncomfortable language.  Pharus is not simply a targeted gay wallflower.  While wearing his armor, he can also be brutally mean-spirited.

Trip Cullman’s expert direction and David Zinn’s simple set design frames this drama enabling the challenges of youth to remain our central focus.  Mr. McCraney is a talented writer who has created multiple stories about being young and gay and black.  In Choir Boy, his efforts are made richer with the addition of song.  The spirituals still need to be sung.  There is still mourning and repression to be overcome.

www.manhattantheatreclub.com

“When horror comes to supper it comes dressed exactly like a Christian.”  Uttered by the town drunk (Neal Huff), this quip is one of a slew of noteworthy ones from the eminently quotable To Kill A Mockingbird.   I’ve personally endured dinners with showy self-proclaimed Christians who are sadly misguided bigots filled with hatred.  Harper Lee’s 1960 novel takes place in the Jim Crow Alabama of 1934. This classic novel has now been adapted into a mesmerizing new play by Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men).  Many of us have read and admired this iconic Pulitzer Prize winning work of American literature.  With race relations in this country seemingly retreating backwards, the timing of this spectacular achievement is ideal.

Celia Keenan-Bolger (Peter and the Starcatchers, The Glass Menagerie) is Scout, an adult actress playing a very young girl.  In the play’s superbly effective structure, she is also one of the narrators along with her brother Jem (Will Pullen) and their friend Dill (Gideon Glick).  The production smoothly transitions from memory play to courtroom drama to small town observations and back again.  The three actors are astonishingly fine in capturing the innocence of youth, the mysteries of grand adventure and the painful disillusionment of growing  up in an unfair world.

The role of Atticus Finch as the lawyer who represents an unjustly accused black man in the deep south won Gregory Peck an Oscar.  Jeff Daniels (Blackbird, God of Carnage) makes this man’s emotions and belief system come alive so naturally.  He is not a towering bastion of elitist liberalism but an intelligent and ordinary man trying to do the right thing.  Teaching his children proper behavior is of paramount importance.  The scintillating dilemma explored here is the sizable gray area between the finely etched lines of right and wrong.

To Kill A Mockingbird has been criticized (and even banned by imbecilic school boards) for its use of racial slurs which frankly seem to accurately illuminate a time and a place.  This production does not shy away from offensive language and it is empowering.  Mr. Sorkin also takes the opportunity to flesh out the major black characters of the accused Tom Robinson (Gbenga Akinnagre) and the Finch’s maid Calpurnia (LaTanya Richardson Jackson).  Both performances are stellar.  There is pain lurking everywhere in this play.  Mirroring life, once you open your eyes the truth cannot be unseen.

Southern whites are both villains and heroes.  Erin Wilhelmi’s Mayella Ewell looks distressingly fragile.  When she takes the stand to tell her story, the scene is raw and unforgettable.  That moment takes place after her father (Frederick Weller) has already spewed his own brand of venom.  Their words are searing and devastating.  Both performances are awesome.  Not to be outclassed, Dakin Matthews’ Judge Taylor presides over this chaos as our spiritual guide traversing the murky waters of American justice.

Ms. Lee’s father was an attorney who defended two black men accused of murder in 1919.  The legal profession is certainly also on trial in To Kill A Mockingbird.  Empty jury box chairs are presumably for us, the audience, to fill.  Horace Gilmer is the prosecutor who shovels and spreads shit all over this particular case.  Kudos to Stark Sands for an indelible portrait of a beacon of immorality.  Each member of this cast achieves greatness within Director Bartlett Sher’s exquisite storytelling flow and movement.  With Miriam Buether’s fluidly dreamlike yet simultaneously realistic scenic design, this production is a marvel to behold.

Racism is still frighteningly relevant in our imperfect society and quickly becoming more worrisome.  One of the Oscar nominated Live Action Shorts this year is Skin.  This film brutally tackles racial violence dished out by beer guzzling, gun-toting, angry white men.  Sometimes I find these movies uncomfortably straddling the fence between condemnation and glorification.   Harper Lee’s story contains repulsive events but never crosses any line; we ultimately know what is right and what is wrong.  Evil is not celebrated.

To Kill A Mockingbird addresses the sad truth that mobs have no conscience or shame.  This play should be performed on American stages for decades to come.  Not to condemn or glorify but to remember and enlighten.  One can only continue to hope and educate the next generation.  Prayer obviously hasn’t been the salvation.  We need elected leaders and appointed judges whose compasses point squarely at humanity.  People who stand firmly on the side of doing the right thing.  Everyone needs to make a date with Scout and examine (or reexamine) the vein of hatred that nearly split this country in two.  And still threatens to again.

www.tokillamockingbird.com

This afternoon I went to the New York Historical Society to see two excellent exhibits that were closing this weekend:  Harry Potter: A History of Magic and Billie Jean King: The Road to 75.  I had the time to see another one that is running until March.  Titled Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow, this chronological study explores fifty years of struggle for racial equality and full citizenship throughout America for former African American slaves and their descendants.  Last night, I saw Kerry Washington deliver a magnificent performance in American Son, a play which takes place now, a century later.  Both the exhibit and this play address the systemic issues facing a minority group and their white overlords.

The exhibit was arranged to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Fourteenth Amendment which dealt with citizenship rights, equal protection and due process.  From that monumental 1868 moment, what followed in America included no jury lynching, voter suppression (poll taxes, violence), minstrel shows, the erection of Confederate monuments and an inevitable massive migration northward.  Centuries and centuries and centuries of oppression and strife.

American Son takes place at a police station lobby in Miami slightly after 4:00 in the early morning hours.  Kendra is losing patience waiting for information about her eighteen year old son.  He did not return home that evening after the two of them had a fight.  She is a psychology professor at a university and her estranged husband works for the FBI.  They live amidst privilege.  Their son has been accepted to West Point after high school.  The white, lunkish cop on duty (Jeremy Jordan) is not very helpful.  After begging, she does learn that her son’s car had been pulled over and there is currently an active investigation.  As the mother of a black man in America today, all her nightmare scenarios percolate in her panicked state.

As Kendra, Ms. Washington (Race, Scandal) spends nearly the entire ninety minutes of this play onstage with three men:  her husband, the officer and a higher ranking Lieutenant.  Rather than tiptoe through this combustible material, playwright Christopher Demos-Brown covers the expected divide which has manifested itself with the shocking chasm between #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter.  Within this context, how do you raise an African American son?

The issue of appearance and behavior is a major focus of this story.  Kendra’s son has started wearing cornrows and baggy clothing.  A hundred years ago, society forced black people to walk on the correct side of the street.  In my lifetime, they were supposed to drink only out of colored water fountains.  Currently, white supremacists are marching openly in the south carrying Confederate flags and wearing swastikas.  I found myself thinking.  Are the presumably real risks of dress code and appearance a continuing part of our long, sad, pendulum swinging attempt at Reconstruction?

American Son does tend to slather the drama a bit thickly at times in trying to hit so many slights and targets.  The officer mentions that he’s “keeping the natives at bay” while trying to stop Kendra going “from zero to ghetto.”  The audience gasps in outraged recognition but the effect is slightly sophomoric.  In possibly the most over-the-top line, her husband says, “Today it’s cornrows.  Tomorrow he’ll be helping O.J. find the real killer.”  The excess sludge notwithstanding, the play is memorably theatrical.  All the performers do fine work here including Steven Pasquale and Eugene Lee.

Most impressive about this piece, however, is the attempt to provide a framework for discussing race, racism and our country’s criminal legal system.  For sure, the audience for American Son will be confronted with the never ending plight African Americans face on a daily basis.  This world is complicated and these characters are imperfect people, as are we all.  After the play’s memorable ending, I was not sure anything was truly resolved mirroring the world in which we live.  For that reason, this play is essential viewing with a powerhouse Ms. Washington an ideal guide to help us move this particular conversation forward.

American Son and this Broadway cast will be shown on Netflix.  After the final performance on January 27th, the play will be taped without an audience.  This topical work is deserving of a wide viewership.

www.americansonplay.com

www.nyhistory.org