Category: Broadway Reviews

First staged in 1980, True West is considered a classic play of sibling rivalry.  Ghosts of previous productions loom large.  The 1982 Steppenwolf Theatre Company production with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich made the play famous.  With playwright Sam Shepard’s approval, it transferred from Chicago to Off-Broadway.  In 2000, Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly were both nominated for Tony awards in a well-regarded Broadway revival.  This is my first opportunity to see this play so my thoughts are not informed by anything other than its reputation.

True West updates the biblical story of Cain and Abel, two brothers whose tensions famously resulted in murder.  Cain was punished into a life of wandering.  With an unnamed wife, he begat the human race.  Successful film star Paul Dano (A Free Man of Color) takes on the character of Austin, a seemingly mild mannered screenwriter who is house sitting for his mother.  His unnamed wife and family are not with him.  His drifter brother is Lee, played by another successful film and stage star, Ethan Hawke (The Coast of Utopia).  Lee has just wandered in from the desert where he survives off the grid using skills which include stealing.

The differences in these two are stark.  One is clean cut, the other sports a beard.  Lee’s clothing is stained.  It’s fairly easy to conjure images of polar opposite brothers.  One of mine is a guard in a maximum security federal prison and I write a theater blog.  Exploiting inherently oddball scenarios of sibling differences can be a surefire winner.  After seeing this production of True West, I cannot grasp what made this play so highly regarded.

There can be no doubt that this material must be heaven to an actor.  Ethan Hawke is a dynamic Lee, full of bravado and testosterone.  He may be the prodigal son but his eyes register a smoldering intensity of jealousy and self-doubt.  The performance is big, accomplished and entertaining throughout.  Mr. Dano’s Austin is a milquetoast at the beginning of the play.  The brother connection is not believable which may be intentional.  The personality bypass required to carry this story arc into crazy town doesn’t work.  The brothers are Cain and Abel after all and bad things are bound to happen.  Both actors have to be able to levitate this material from passive-aggressive fraternal opposites to drunken enemies.  In my view, this  balance was too one-sided.  Without the riveting fireworks, cracks in the play’s structure, notably its unrealistic timeline, seem irksome.

In addition to the core brother battles, Mr. Shepard added additional colors to his play. Rough Old West frontier survival meets the New West, notably one with the charms of a seductive, vapid and commercialized Hollywood.  As for this playwright, I may not yet have found a production that lives up to his reputation.  The Fool For Love Broadway revival a few years ago was clearly not helpful.  I remain hopeful for an outstanding version of the Pulitzer winning Buried Child or Curse of the Starving Class.

www.roundabouttheatre.org

I was not familiar with the author and star of Mike Birbiglia’s The New One before this show was an off-Broadway hit last year prior to this transfer to Broadway.  On a cold January evening, I decided to check out this comedian and see this performance before it closed.  Spending time with Mike is warming to the soul.  Should you pay Broadway prices?  Debatable.  Will you get to know Mike and feel entertained?  Definitely.

Mr. Birbiglia is a couch potato.  He loves the couch.  It’s his favorite piece of furniture.  You don’t just sit in it.  The couch hugs you unlike the bed which indulgently requires a room to be named after it.  Some of these jokes are simple and sweetly funny.  Others take us to the prostitutes in Amsterdam where we hear about an embarrassing yet hilarious experience.  After getting to know the self-described unremarkable man, we learn what this show is about.  His wife, clearly the much better half, wants to have a baby.  That’s the new one of the title.

Hearing a litany of shortcomings for this potential father and also his proclivity to eat pizza until he loses consciousness, Mike gives us a list of seven reasons why he should not be one.  The comic monologue takes shape as we consider his sperm count and baby paraphernalia.  There are laughs to be had.  Parenting is really the woman’s domain.  Based on personal observation and his own being, Mike’s opinion of the male half of the species is that they are generally useless.

The New One contains amusing material and is a very pleasant, short evening.  When I opened the program, I saw that Beowulf Boritt (Tony winner for the stunning Act One) was the Set Designer.  Mr. Boritt has now designed twenty Broadway shows, many of them quite complex.  The set was cozy for sure (a nice rug and a stool) but why was he called in to do this?  Late in the show, we find out and it’s a treat.  The New One got its Broadway moment.  Hopefully this show will be filmed for audiences to enjoy in the future, sitting on their couches and getting hugs.

www.thenewone.com

Broadway used to be a place where comedies such as The Lifespan of a Fact thrived.  These were topical entertainments; thought provoking but not too heavy with a talented cast you really wanted to see.  On a dismal rainy Monday night in Manhattan, I was rewarded for my effort.  In our world of fake news, conspiracy theories and outright lies, a play about a fact checker at a magazine could not be more timely.

Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell wrote this play based on a non-fiction book of the same name.  John D’Agata and Jim Fingal published their personal story concerning an essay about a seventeen year old who killed himself in Las Vegas.  John is played by Bobby Cannavale (The Big Knife, The Hairy Ape, The Motherfucker With the Hat).  His persona is literary genius, big picture guy.  Cherry Jones (The Glass Menagerie, Doubt, The Heiress) portrays Emily, the magazine editor torn between brilliant writing and probable literary license.  On the one hand in the age of declining circulation, print magazines need stories this brilliant.  On the other hand she has to weigh the risks of lawsuits and reputation hits caused by later corrections.

Emily hires Jim to fact check the article.  John points out to Jim that the piece is an essay not an article.  Dumb intern.  A Harvard graduate, Jim throws himself into his work and has copius notes for the story.  Every detail is analyzed.  John wants to write that the building’s bricks are red even thought they are brown.  He states that there are 34 strip clubs in Vegas based on a source that says there are only 31.  Red and 34 are much better, more poetic “facts” than the real ones. And so it goes, writer and fact checker sparring the details with a nervous editor on deadline teetering between extremes.

This is a comedy which doesn’t take sides.  The two sparring characters are very funny in their quest to prevail.  We see ourselves through Emily and her decisions.  We live in a world where people believe crazy stuff.  I know someone who believes that Michelle Obama is a man and can prove it.  Facts are an increasingly valuable commodity in a society dumbed down with underfunded education and overzealous idolatry.  How important are the details?  If incorrect, does that put a question mark on the story being told?  Should there be literary license to let an author tell the tale in their stylistic way?  What is true?  Is the brick brown all day or can it seem red during sunset?

Daniel Radcliffe’s performance as the fact checker was spot on.  He’s a hero, a nerd and a idealist who can also be seen as an indignant snob whose youthful exuberance colors the world in black and white.  I’ve seen this actor four times previously in New York:  The Cripple of Inishmaan, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Equus and Privacy.  Mr. Radcliffe is always good.  In The Lifespan of a Fact, he excels with sharp comedic timing and a precisely drawn character who is nicely outlined in gray.  Further, he confidently holds the stage with Ms. Jones and Mr. Cannavale, two powerhouse actors.

At the end of this enjoyable evening of theater, I am reminded of the band Talking Heads. The song “Crosseyed and Painless” contains the lyric,” Facts don’t do what I want them to.”  Whether you are a writer, a businessperson or a politician, there will always be facts that are inherently difficult to swallow.  The smartest and most talented people usually figure out a way to embrace them and move on.  Then again, there will always be multitudes of ostriches burying their heads in the sand.

www.lifespanofafact.com

Elaine May is the star of The Waverly Gallery, Kenneth Lonergan’s memory play based on his grandmother’s dementia.  Gladys Green lives in Greenwich Village and operates an art gallery in a neighborhood where everything is past its prime.  Her grandson lives in the apartment next door.  Daniel Reed (Lucas Hedges) is the narrator, occasionally breaking out of the play to speak with the audience about his grandmother’s decline and its impact on him and his family.  Written in 2000, this play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Dementia is certainly a major illness impacting the lives of so many people, including families that I know.  At the time of its writing, this play may have been revelatory in its exploration of this woman and the fearsome descent into a frightening place of confusion and despair.  In this version, I found the proceedings extremely slow.  Director Lila Neugebauer paces this piece deliberately with long scene changes.  The images projected seem to showcase scenes from a world when life was being lived to the fullest.  The speeches from the grandson are thoughtful but oddly clinical.

The words in this play are often clever but nothing really happens.  There is a side story about an artist (Michael Cera) showing his work in her gallery that was diverting but overlong.  The core of the problem for me was the fact that I only felt emotion for Gladys.  I left the theater wondering if Ms. May’s performance was so strong that it lifted the play into something more meaningful.  I found the rest of this talented ensemble too actorly and stiff.

Frankly, I am surprised that The Waverly Gallery did not speak to me having witnessed (and still witnessing) levels of dementia being dealt with in families I know.  I’ve absorbed gut wrenching stories like the novel Still Alice by Lisa Genova and its depiction of a woman’s sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer’s disease.  Why could I not connect with the material here?  Is it the play, perhaps not deep enough anymore with this terrain having been explored more thoroughly in the last twenty years?  Was it the direction which plodded along hurting a thinly plotted story?  Was it the actors who didn’t seem to connect me to their inner feelings other than superficially?  What I do know is that Elaine May’s performance was an incredible combination of understated yet big, and undeniably magnetic.

www.thewaverlygalleryonbroadway.com

Remember August: Osage County, Tracey Lett’s Pulitzer Prize winning three act masterpiece with a large cast centering around the Weston family in Oklahoma?  For those who relish enormously satisfying plays stuffed with full-blooded characters, the successor to the throne has arrived.  The Ferryman, written by the extremely talented playwright Jez Butterworth (Jerusalem, The River), should be on your must-see list.

After a brief ominous prologue, the play opens with a man and a woman playing Connect Four, drinking whiskey and debating which rock band they would want on a desert island:  The Beatles, The Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin.  Hearing her answer is incorrect, she clarifies that the question was who she wanted to be with on the island not whose music she wanted to hear.  This play is filled with conversational detail.  The action takes place in the home of the large Carney family who are rural famers in Northern Ireland.  The time is 1981 as the Maze prison hunger strikes are occurring during The Troubles.  The family is readying the household for Harvest Day.  The goose has been fattened up but goes missing.  Everyone seem to adore whiskey and relish storytelling.  Monologues, from comedic to tragic, occasionally mystical and often jarringly intense, are riveting throughout.

Themes pour out of this play nearly as often as the whisky flows.  It is possible that the only family member not to drop back a shot or a beer is the infant child.  The Ferryman is a celebration of Irish family, home and their famed culture of storytelling.  The Ferryman is also a commentary on The Troubles and how they impacted the Irish people generally and this family specifically.  Centuries of conflict between Northern Ireland and England.  Centuries of conflict between Catholics and Protestants.  How do everyday people live their lives?  Must we hate the opposite side?  Should we?  Is there even a side that is completely in the right?

For thousands of years our world has been engulfed in wars that never seem to end.  Somehow religion seems to be a key factor but we know that money and power are the bigger draws.  Mr. Butterworth has written a play that takes an intimate look at a political conflict within a much larger family drama.  The scope grows as the play ends and you realize that stories such as these can probably be similarly concocted for many cultures and their conflicts.  Being Ireland, however, the tale here is rich with words, imagery, gregariousness and alcohol.

Directed by Sam Mendes, the production is first-rate.  The acting is uniformly superb, notably by the children.  All of the creative elements work in support of the piece.  The Ferryman is always alive.  The nearly two dozen characters breathe, sigh, laugh and cry.  A vividly real and very colorful family is celebrating a holiday with serious political drama swirling in the air.  Aunt Pat (an excellent Dearbhla Molloy) stirs and stirs the pot.  Sound like an upcoming Thanksgiving dinner in America?

I visited Northern Ireland about a decade ago.  A driver took us down the street which was ground zero for The Troubles.  The protests were painted curbs rather than bombs.  In a pub near Galway, we met a group of young men who were on their way to an overnight bachelor party on the Aran Islands.  They befriended us for a few hours and stories were shared.  They bought so many rounds that there were four pints in front of me at one point.  That is the richness of a warmhearted people.  Go see The Ferryman.  It will touch your heart, stimulate your brain and maybe even provide a mirror for societal reflection.  That is how great a play Jez Butterworth has written.

www.theferrymanbroadway.com

In Sarah Bernhardt’s own words, “the roles of men are in general more intellectual than the roles of women… Only the role of Phédre gives me the charm of digging into a heart that is truly anguished… Always, in the theater, the parts played by the men are the best parts.  And yet theater is the sole art where women can sometimes be superior to men.”  The new play Bernhardt/Hamlet takes us backstage as Ms. Bernhardt prepares to take on Hamlet in the year 1899.  The great actress Janet McTeer (A Doll’s House, Mary Stuart) grabs hold of her portrayal of the legendarily great actress and a very compelling story soars.

Hamlet was one of Ms. Bernhardt’s famous stage triumphs.  In this play, she wrestles with how to grasp the character and the meanings of Shakespeare’s lines.  Current lover and playwright Edmond Rostand (an excellent Jason Butler Harner) is convinced to write a prose version to replace the bard’s poetry.  This famed actress rehearses and rehearses scenes from Hamlet and the audience is treated to an insight into the creative process.  When Ms. McTeer and Dylan Baker perform a classic scene between Hamlet and his father’s ghost, the magical spark of theater is realized for them – and for us.  This play and, most importantly, these performances illuminate the often rocky terrain required to reach creative peaks.

That theme and the presence of Ms. McTeer is satisfying enough.  The great news about Bernhardt/Hamlet is that the play offers so much more than that to ponder.  It’s loosely a biography of this famous actress, from her lover(s) to her illegitimate son.  The famed Art Nouveau graphic artist Alfons Mucha created her poster for Hamlet (which I just saw at the his namesake museum in Prague last month).  He agonizes how to capture the essence of what Bernhardt is doing.  Not everyone is convinced her taking on Hamlet is a good idea (nor the scandal of a rewrite).  At a café Rostand says to his companion, “you’ve made up your mind before you’ve even seen it.”  The reply:  “After all I am a theater critic.”

The creative risks taken by Ms. Bernhardt in shattering centuries of tradition to challenge herself to grab hold of one of the most important roles in the theatrical canon is pure drama itself.  Adding in her theatrical orbit, the supporters and dissenters, helps to paint a rich tapestry of the type of drive and desire required to unearth cultural milestones.  Ms. McTeer guides us through Bernhardt’s witty, egocentric, flamboyant, nervy, confident, mystified, uncertain and nervous persona.  While she does make a convincing feminist statement, the personal statement felt even bigger from my vantage point.

Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Hand to God) directed Bernhardt/Hamlet and the many laughs are perfectly executed.  The dressing room scene in Act II is one of my favorites of the year.  He has assembled an extraordinary team from the fine acting ensemble to the designers of the set, costumes and lighting.  As is fitting though, Sarah Bernhardt still manages to stand above all that, alone and iconic.  And Theresa Rebeck has created a marvelous vehicle to celebrate women, creativity, theater and risk taking worthy of its grand subject.

www.roundabouttheatre.org