Category: Off-Broadway Reviews

When exiting the theater after Fairview has come to an end, my first reaction was a need for reflection time.  Jackie Sibblies Drury has written a shockingly fascinating big broad comedy that is structurally dissonant (for lack of a better term).  I will not spoil the enjoyment of this play for anyone.  Ms. Drury has serious observations to share on the subject of race.  How we think about race.  How race is used for entertainment.  How race is divisive.  How human beings are all the same underneath a layer of skin.

Fairview begins as an African American family comedy.  It’s Grandma’s birthday and her daughter is throwing a bash at her house.  Her demanding and critical sister arrives.  Her husband is helping her get ready but her stress level is so high she cannot relax.  The family revels in the fact that they are known for dancing.  Dancing does indeed happen and the entire family’s spirit soars together, if only for that moment.  Familial comedies with bite are common.  What makes Fairview so unique are the layers that get added on and then multiply.

Sarah Benson’s direction is assured.  This is a complicated, absorbing piece of theater which respects the audience but forces them to think outside the box.  Raja Feather Kelly choreographed Fairview and her work has a big impact.  The entire cast miraculously balances caricature and farce with layered dimensions of depth and realness.  But the playwriting is the star here.  Ms. Drury has many surprises up her sleeve.  I won’t spoil them and you should not miss them.  This play is a co-production with Berkeley Rep which will present Fairview in October.

www.sohorep.org

www.berkeleyrep.org

At one point during Ivo van Hove’s production of the interestingly creative yet maddeningly tortoise-paced production of The Damned, a crucial line appears in English supertitles.  “The complicity of the German people is the miracle of the Third Reich.”  A headline in today’s New York Times:  “As Trump Struggles With Helsinki’s Fallout, Congress Faces a New Charge:  Complicity.”  A very interesting time for this piece to be showcased in the large Park Avenue Armory space in collaboration with the Comédie-Française who premiered this work at the Avignon Festival in 2016.

The Damned is a renowned 1969 film by Luchino Visconti.  It was nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar and named Best Foreign Film by the National Board of Review.  The plot centers around the Essenbeck family and their steelworks business as Adolph Hitler is coming to power in 1930’s Germany.  The story is a thinly veiled reference to the Essen-based Krupp family of steel industrialists.  A soap opera that would make the TV show Dynasty blush, The Damned has murders, double crossings, incest, child molestation, a homosexual orgy and a row of coffins placed on the side of a massive set.

The play begins with the 1933 burning of the Reischtag (home of the German parliament) one month after Hitler became Chancellor.  Building on anti-communist hysteria, the event was immediately politicized.  Hitler convinced President Hindenburg to issue a decree suspending most civil liberties including freedoms of expression, the press, the right of public assembly, as well as eliminating the secrecy of the post and the telegraph.  Four months later Hitler carried out a series of political executions in order to consolidate his power.  The subjects of those attacks were the SA (Storm Troopers), millions of whom helped the Nazi’s rise to power since the 1920’s.  The leader of the SA was Ernst Rohm whose brutish behavior, heavy drinking and homosexuality offended conservative elements.  The Night of the Long Knives is portrayed as a stylized orgy scene before turning into a bloody execution.

Using a camera, the play is also projected on a large screen.  There are close-ups and historical footage used effectively to enhance the storytelling.  My reaction was appreciation for creativity rather than a total embrace.  The pacing was deliberately very slow.  The repeating processions to the coffins was visually arresting the first time, with diminished results thereafter.  The orgy scene was indulgent and would have had the same impact in half the time.  If The Damned was a half hour shorter, I believe it would have been just as stylized without also being plodding.

The subject matter, however, is beyond intriguing for today’s audiences.  A politician rising to power attacking established personal freedoms, including the press.  A political party embedding itself with the armament business.  A warning that the complicity of people led to the end of democracy and the rise of the Third Reich.  The play ends spectacularly.  I walked out of the theater pondering how the tale of America at the beginning of the 21st Century will be told eighty years from now.

www.armoryonpark.org

The title character of Mary Page Marlowe is an unremarkable woman in many respects.  She may also represent every woman.  Or someone well known by Tracy Letts, the terrific playwright of the Pulitzer Prize winning August: Osage County.  Mary Page is played by six different actresses at various ages:  Blair Brown, Emma Geer, Mia Sinclair Jenness, Tatiana Maslany, Kellie Overbey and Susan Pourfar.  This play explores a life imperfectly lived, filled with regrets about decisions made along the way.

The play opens as Mary Page is informing her two children that she and her husband are divorcing.  She is moving to Lexington, Kentucky where she has a new job.  The scene is tense, tight and believably traumatic for the three of them.  Pivotal life moments are considered throughout this somewhat absorbing piece.  The scenes that are excellent are moving studies of this woman and her evolution.

Other scenes are less successful such as the one between young Mary Page and her mother Roberta.  Her daughter is rehearsing a song and mom is bitter and just plain mean to her.  The tone felt oddly out of place with the rest of the play.  Yes, the mother has had a hard life and wants Mary Page to have a thicker skin to survive.  But the characterization of Roberta (Grace Gummer) is played harsher than perhaps intended as written.

This relatively short play starts meandering about halfway through and then abruptly concludes in a very unsatisfying finish.  A new character is introduced in the final scene that adds nothing to what came before.  I’m guessing the that the play ends unremarkably to underscore an unremarkable, unsatisfying life.  Mary Page Marlowe is an interesting life study which feels unevenly observed.

If you want to see what outstanding direction of a play means, get yourself to the Mint Theater’s production of Conflict.  Jenn Thompson has orchestrated a masterful revival of this superb 1925 story by Miles Malleson.  The Mint Theater’s mission is to rediscover lost or neglected works and has been on an impressive tear of truly outstanding productions lately.  That list includes last year’s Yours Unfaithfully by the same playwright.  Conflict is near the top of anything they have ever staged.

Within the scope of an off-Broadway budget, Ms. Thompson has managed to present a gorgeous to look at physical production inhabited by a stellar cast.  It certainly helps that the play is excellent and politically topical (conservatives versus liberals).  But this drama has been elevated by some of the finest pacing I can remember.  The silent pauses are as extraordinarily tense and as important as the spoken words.  When all of these elements come together as richly as in this production, that is directorial genius.  Bravo.

Conflict is billed as a love story.  The Lady Dare Bellington is a wealthy young woman (Jessie Shelton) involved with Major Sir Ronald Clive (Henry Clarke).  The time is early 1920’s London at the time when the Labour Party was becoming the primary challengers to the Conservatives.  In this play, personal relationships, political persuasions, women’s attitudes and her place in society all converge.  When you throw in the down-on-his-luck character of Tom Smith (Jeremy Beck), the tinder sets fire and never diminishes.

Act III, Scene 1 takes place in a bed-sitting room in some London lodgings.  Amelia White expertly portrays Mrs. Robinson, the owner, who has rented a room to Mr. Smith.   This scene between Tom and the Lady Dare is one of the finest pieces of acting and directing I expect to be fortunate enough to see this year.  The chemistry between them is, incredibly, both seismic and restrained.  Ms. Shelton and Mr. Beck are superb, as is the entire cast.

Additive to this playgoing experience is the Mint’s typically excellent set design by John McDermott.  All of the creative contributions are memorable.  The costumes by Martha Hally are ideal.  The production is bathed in great lighting by Mary Louise Geiger.  This is top notch theater.

The ending lines of Conflict are urgently important to be heard in today’s America.  Yes, Conflict is about opposing political views.  The play is also about family, love, personal growth, apathy, birthright and beliefs.  Undoubtedly one of this year’s great productions, the Mint Theater’s Conflict, directed by Jenn Thompson, is not to be missed.  I sincerely hope that regional theaters everywhere grab this one now that it has been rediscovered.

www.minttheater.org

Basketball is the subject from which we explore the evolution of China from 1971 until the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.  A foul-mouthed, hyperaggressive basketball coach from the University of San Francisco travels to Beijing during the reign of Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976.  In 1972, President Nixon was welcomed which signaled the opening of China to the world.  Right before that moment in history, The Great Leap invents a meeting between the American coach and a Chinese one.

What advice is given?  An important one is to get taller players (a tongue in cheek joke).  In 1989, these coaches will meet again in a game to take place in China during the protests.  The play’s structure goes back and forth in time to accommodate the seemingly never ending clichés.  Playwright Lauren Yee combines a sports story, a soap opera and a commentary on the changes in China during that period.  We see them manifest themselves in its dutiful servant, Wen Chang, the coach played by BD Wong (M. Butterfly).  His performance is interesting considering the character has far too many connect-the-dots contrivances to convey.

For me, the most successful portrayal was the American coach Saul played by Ned Eisenberg (Six Degrees of Separation, Rocky, Golden Boy).  As written, the character is far from fully developed (and also a hoary cliché) but the swagger and obnoxiousness of Saul butting against the repressive nature of a Communist culture seemed steeped in realism.  The Great Leap was directed by Taibi Magar who has been brilliantly creative recently in such productions such as Ars Nova’s Underground Railroad Game (currently on a national tour).  I’m not sure this overwrought piece was salvageable.

www.atlantictheater.org

Lois Smith is an 87 year old actress who always seems to be working.  In recent seasons I’ve seen her in Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime and Annie Baker’s John, both excellent plays.  (Marjorie Prime was also made into a movie last year.)  In Peace For Mary Frances, she plays a widow who is hooked up to an oxygen tank nearing the end of her days.  Presumably the peace that Mary Frances wants is death because the family members and assorted caregivers here are more than slightly annoying.  The peace that the audience wants is for this overlong drama to finally end.

This play was written by Lily Thorne and it’s her professional playwriting debut.  There are so many issues thrown in to the theatrical blender that the situation is beyond even remotely believable.  Squabbling sisters, one with a drug addiction, the other struggling to make ends meet.  That’s ok I guess but since her daughter is a television star, the poor storyline is bizarre.  Our starlet has a sister with a newborn that gets carried around the stage for more scenes than is advisable or even reasonably probable.  Caregivers offer advice while trying to pretend this family isn’t totally crackers.  After the terrible (and also boring) Good For Otto, The New Group’s season – with the exception of Jerry Springer, the Musical – is hugely disappointing.

The pace of direction here by Lila Neugebauer (The Wolves) is glacial.  The scenic design by Dane Laffrey is too large for the stage and results in clumsy movement, notably in the bedroom.  The actors try hard but there are too many plot contrivances and far too many scenes to make this drama effective in any way.  We do get to see Lois Smith talk to her dead husband near the end of Peace For Mary Frances in yet another revelation from the family’s seemingly unendless catalog of mini-dramas.  Ms. Smith’s character received extra morphine to help her ease her struggles toward the end.  The audience, however, just remained numb, physically squirming in their seats while hoping that this really bad production would end.

www.thenewgroup.org

www.theaterreviewsfrommyseat/goodforotto

www.theaterreviewsfrommyseat/jerryspringer

www.theaterreviewsfrommyseat/downtownraceriot