Category: Off-Broadway Reviews

Stage Life is a play that is described as “a rousing celebration of lives well-lived in and about the theater.”  I can confidently state that rousing is not achieved.  Conceived and adapted by Martin Tackel, this piece takes quotes, short stories, letters and reminiscences to attempt to convey the spirit of those who create live theater.  Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Shelly Winters and Thornton Wilder all make five second appearances.  In between there are scenes such as the Class where we watch actors in training.  Are you hearing the car as yourself or as a character?  The first time it is asked, it’s sort of mildly amusing.  After that, it is just tedious.

Six actors play all of the parts here.  The most interesting section was The Macbeth Murder Mystery adapted from a James Thurber story.  Unfortunately, the evening as a whole is a fairly directionless hodgepodge.  More tellingly, the audience was clearly not responding to the material.  There is an idea here to celebrate the creative process and the myriad of interesting characters both on-stage and off.  I’m not exactly sure who this show is for but it is not me.  Stage Life is inside baseball.  So far inside that it is hard to see anything at all.  A swing and a miss.

www.stagelifetheplay.com

A comedy by the Greek playwright Aristophanes, The Birds was first performed in 414 BC.  The play begins with two middle-aged men stumbling across a hillside wilderness.  They are in search of the  legendary Thracian king Tereus who once was metamorphosed into a hoopoe bird.  Both are fed up with Athens, its law courts, politics, false oracles and military antics.  A brilliant idea is born.  The birds should stop flying about and build a grand city in the sky.  Not only would they be able to lord over men, they could also blockade the Olympian gods.  No sacrifices from humans means the gods would starve into submission, much like the Greeks had recently done to the island of Melos.

Staged in the large St. Ann’s Warehouse, this production has been co-produced by the Onassis Cultural Centre-Athens.  With the exception of bird caws, the entire play is performed in Greek with English subtitles.  There is a band on stage for the semi-successful yet indulgent musical interludes.  The original also had a Chorus and songs.  Scholars have debated whether this piece was a political allegory or simply escapist entertainment.  Characters who are fed up with law courts, politics, false oracles and military antics?  2500 years later and thrust into cray cray America, The Birds feels like both.

How to describe this production?  We begin with the two men cluelessly wandering around as if this were a Greek production of Waiting For Godoh.  (Except it should been renamed Waiting For Dodo.)  Toss in bizarre visuals which would be completely at home in any episode of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.  Add a dash of silent movie realness and a little French-inspired surrealism.  Wrap all of this in a very modestly budgeted but cleverly executed Cirque de Soleil environment.

The Birds is the longest of Aristophanes’ surviving plays.  Parts of this exercise are fun to watch.  Other sections drag on and on.  While The Birds is creative, amusing and historically interesting, it is also just too long.  Might this artistic Greek cassoulet be best appreciated by elite intellectuals?  Like the man sitting next to me repeatedly checking his phone throughout the performance?  When it was over he leapt to his feet loudly shouting “bravo, bravo.”  I sensed a false oracle in our midst.

www.stannswarehouse.org

Finally there is a production in the 50th anniversary year of the Classic Stage Company worth shouting about.  Thanks to Director Jack Cummings III and his Transport Theater Group’s co-production, Summer and Smoke is a triumphant reconsideration of a Tennessee Williams’ play not often listed amongst his classics.  In 1948 this drama followed A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway and was later made into a film starring Geraldine Page (Oscar nominated for Best Actress).  The part of Alma Winemiller is that good and in this production Marin Ireland (reasons to be pretty, Ironbound) cements its reputation as a great role in an exceptional piece of theater.

Summer and Smoke takes place in Glorious Hill, Mississippi from the turn of the century through 1916.  Alma is a music teacher and a reverend’s daughter, impressed by the grandeur of Gothic cathedrals.  All her life she has grown up next door to John Buchanan, a doctor’s son, who is more interested in women and gambling than academic studies of human anatomy.  Naturally we are in unrequited love territory.  He accuses her of relying on that “worn out magic.”  Nathan Darrow (Richard III, House of Cards) plays John and the chemistry between he and Ms. Ireland are electric, tense and crackling.  Both performances are stellar.

When you surround these fully realized characters with an excellent supporting cast and a production this fine and focused, the result is simply extraordinary entertainment.  Transport Theater Group is known for staging re-imagined American classics such as last season’s flawless Picnic and Come Back Little Sheba.  The commonality between all of these productions is deceptively simple presentations.  Sets and scenes are suggested with as few props as possible.  The words and the characters are the central focus.  When the acting can rise to this challenge, you are rewarded with quality as high as this production of Summer and Smoke.

www.classicstage.org

www.transportgroup.org

Based on a French comedy from 1738, David Ives has created another adaptation from this period.  This one was called La Metromanie written by Alexis Piron.  The title loosely translates to The Poetry Craze and was a Page Six scandal back in the day, apparently based on a public embarrassment for Voltaire.  None of this really matters though.  As noted by Mr. Ives in the program, “When my friends ask me what it’s about, I always say that The Metromaniacs is a comedy with five parts, none of them important.”  And that, my friends, is the problem.

In the spring of 1738, poetry is everywhere.  So much so that everyone speaks in rhymes.  We have a young poet, his uncle, a young woman in love with poetry, her father, a young man in love with the young woman in love with poetry, a maid and a valet.  The last two are of the randy variety.  The ballroom of this home in Paris is outfitted with fake trees as it is to be the scene of a play, a subplot here.  Meanwhile, identities are confused and, oh, it does not really matter.  We are here for the rhymes.  The problem is that The Metromaniacs is only occasionally funny.  It wraps itself in a blanket of cleverness that keeps the play from taking off.

Everyone in the show does nice work and the entire production design is quite good.  My favorite performer was Adam Green as Mondor the valet.  There is nothing particularly wrong with this production.  But in the end/I cannot bend.  The show was sort of lackluster/a positive review I cannot muster.  Excessive poetry dear friends is my consternation/from rhyming overload there will be no adoration.

www.redbulltheater.com

Sahr Ngaujah plays the title character of Mlima’s Tale.  Both actor and the elephant he plays are powerfully built, commanding presences.  Nearing half a century on Earth, he is one of those now rare big tusked bull elephants who are nearing extinction due to poachers and the ivory trade.  The best part of this tale is his journey and his spirituality.  Mr. Ngaujah’s (Fela!) performance is emotionally intense with tremendously masculine yet poetic physicality.  He is a superb Mlima.

A story of the sad, rather endless butchering of these animals for their prized giant ivory tusks is one that most people find upsetting.  Another species being slaughtered to extinction so wealthy individuals can buy carvings.  Or worse, shoot animals for fun.  So why then did we leave the theater feeling little emotional involvement?  The play was written by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage (Ruined, Sweat).  Mlima’s Tale is certainly not a bad play.  It may be just overly clinical while being informative with its moral teachings.

Three players act this tale with Mlima.  They are what you would expect:  corrupt officials, illegal poachers, art dealers, border guards and so on.  Three actors playing so many characters in relatively short scenes does not help the generic feeling of this fable.  Some of the scenery and lighting design is quite beautiful.  However, the highly choreographed scene changes with quotes projected to underscore themes are distracting.

All this leads to the three of us who attended this play feeling disappointedly disconnected at the end.  But we all loved Mlima:  the character, the awesome sound effects (Justin Hicks) and, most especially, the actor portraying him.  Yes, turning elephants into ghosts is an absolute tragedy.  Hard to recommend Mlima’s Tale though given our unanimous lack of enthusiasm.

www.publictheater.org

Happily, I’m having some difficulty deciding the right words to describe Yerma.  Magnificently theatrical?  Ferociously intense?  Unforgettably riveting?  Perfection?  All these hosannas and many more apply to this fantastic play and this extraordinary production.

Yerma is based on a 1934 play written by Frederico Garcia Lorca.  It tells a tragic story of a woman living in rural Spain who is desperate to have children but is infertile in an age where she is expected to procreate.  Simon Stone has adapted this story, moved the characters to modern London and turned Yerma into a journalist.  As a character named Her, she is in her thirties.  Early on we learn that she now wants to have a child.  With brilliantly realistic yet highly dramatic words, the characters, their situations and interactions are fascinatingly complex.  Mr. Stone is also the Director of this masterpiece.

You walk into the theater and the audience is split into two sides.  Both face a wide rectangular glass box which is carpeted inside.  As the play unfolds, screens above announce a chapter and describe what’s to follow, such as “deception.”  Scene changes include a complete blackout and dissonant singing or music.  The scene changes are their own fascinating element.  Not only do they appear complicated to execute but the pauses add tension to the ever increasing levels of intensity in this story.  Lizzie Clachan did the ingenious, jaw-dropping set design.

Yerma had its world premiere at the Young Vic in London in 2016.  Playing Her, Billie Piper won every award available and she does not disappoint.  In Yerma, she has the role of her life in a performance of incalculable emotional depth and range.   For a month, this production has been mounted at the Park Avenue Armory.  Every actor on the stage is astonishingly superb, especially Brendan Cowell’s performance as John.

When Ms. Piper came out for her curtain call, she looked understandably exhausted.  The audience was so overwhelmed that it took a few moments for clapping to start.  At that moment, you realize your great fortune.   You were lucky enough to see one of the great ones.  Of this year and this decade, for sure.  One of the greats of the century?  A safe bet.  Of my lifetime?  Definitely.

www.armoryonpark.org

After having just endured The Low Road at the Public Theater, could another play assault me with a thematic bludgeon so soon again?  The answer, thanks to The Stone Witch, is an unqualified yes.  This play was written by Shem Bitterman.  We are a cabin in the woods where revered children’s author Simon Grindberg lives.  The handsome set promises Maurice Sendak.  That is exactly where this play goes, from the Hans Christian Andersen award hanging on the wall to the death of family members during the Holocaust.  Even the young naked boy from the controversial In The Night Kitchen is referenced.

Dan Lauria (Lombardi, The Wonder Years) plays the fictional author who is in a major writing slump, not having written a book in twelve years.  His agent, described multiple times as a barracuda, hires an aspiring writer to help coax another book out of him.  Into the woods and off to the cabin we go.  Naturally our genius is an irascible fellow and drawn with every mood that could possibly fit into a long ninety minutes.  The result is that the promising idea of this play is not achieved.

Rupak Ginn plays Peter Chandler, the young man who arrives with his newly minted manuscript of The Stone Witch.  The two men start down an interesting, albeit very brief path of collaboration.  Why is she made of stone?   Unfortunately the play takes a quick turn to crazy town and plants it flag down firmly.  If you miss any of the plot points, don’t worry.  They are all repeated.  On the plus side, I did leave the theater wanting to read the fictional children’s book.

www.westsidetheatre.com

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/thelowroad

In one scene of The Low Road, a character is rambling while another punctuates his speech with individual words as commentary.  When he shouts “mellifluous” my eyes roll back into my head.  Unfortunately I am not the three-eyed raven in Game of Thrones and I was unable to transport myself to another time and place.  This ambitious comedy was written by Bruce Norris who authored the multi-award winning Clybourne Park.  Both plays concern themselves with race and injustice, with The Low Road also questioning the validity of capitalism.  A bludgeon is the weapon of thematic choice.

Adam Smith, the man who laid down the foundation for classical free market economic theory, narrates this tale set in the early stages of America’s founding.  It’s a big, bold new country and history is happening!  A young bastard named Jim Trewitt is raised in a brothel, winds up stealing his mother’s money, buys a slave and heads down the low road of capitalism.  During his journey, he gets to stand naked, stripped of his clothes.  He is shackled to his slave.  He is just another bad boy capitalist destroying wealth with lousy investments.  He is well played by Chris Perfetti.

Less aggressively highbrow plays might be crucified for slathering on the racial, economic and religious stereotypes that are in full bloom here.  I found this pretentious drivel repulsive.  The opening time shifting perspective which begins the second act is particularly sophomoric. All of this self-important farcical babble is given a big budget and highly stylized staging by Michael Greif (Dear Evan Hansen, Next to Normal, Grey Gardens, Rent).  The costumes by Emily Rebholz are quite good.

If you bother to attend this play, stay until the end so you can experience the wildly ridiculous conclusion which bellows CAPITALISM IS BAD!  Maybe then you can explain to me the purpose of the mockingly disabled character who was kicked while in his mother’s pregnant belly and now repeats what other characters say.  Oh, and you could also decode why he wore a Hannibal Lector-like face mask for part of the proceedings.  If you need your fix of early American history, go uptown and see Hamilton.  The Low Road made me regret being in the room where it happened.

www.publictheater.org