A Letter To Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay person in the United States to win a political office when he was elected.  Along with the mayor of San Francisco, he was murdered in 1978 during his first term in office.  Fairly grim stuff and covered by the multiple Oscar winning film Milk, starring Sean Penn.  The musical A Letter to Harvey Milk takes place in the spring of 1986, seven years after the murder.  While the musical has serious themes, it is not a biography at all.

Based on a short story, this show is about a older man named Harry Weinberg, beautifully played by Adam Heller.  Harry used to be a butcher and Mr. Milk was a frequent customer.  Harry joins a writing class in his Jewish Community Center, eventually penning the letter of the title.  Along the way there are brief moments with Harvey Milk (Michael Bartoli) but this show focuses on Harry, his wife Frannie (Cheryl Stern) and Barbara, the young writing instructor (Julia Knitel).  Through ninety minutes we engage in fairly familiar emotional territory with the main conceit centering on homosexuality and acceptance, with a large schmear of Jewish humor.  Example:  Who do you think I am?  Shylock Holmes?

Thankfully, A Letter to Harvey Milk has a very strong book and the three lead characters are given a lot to say and think about.  The story arc surprised me and was very effective in peeling back the layers within both Harry and Barbara, and the letter that was written.  The music and lyrics range from garden variety to schtick.  However, the big ballads are very good and memorable, notably “Frannie’s Hands” and “Love Is a Woman.”  Evan Pappas skillfully directed A Letter to Harvey Milk.  Interesting scene transitions and captivating lighting effects enriched the storyline in this well-performed production.

www.lettertoharveymilk.com

Folk Wandering (Pipeline Theatre)

In development for seven years in various theater incubators, the musical Folk Wandering has now been given a full production by the Pipeline Theatre Company.  This show seems to be about three women and their experiences in 1911, 1933 and 1955 America.  One is a young girl of thirteen living in a tenement but wants to be a journalist.  Another is wandering the west during the Great Depression with her daughter.  The third is in a relationship with a musician who looks like James Dean.

Folk Wandering’s opening number is “Attic Song” in which the entire cast is rifling through the bins and boxes of a large attic (quality scenic design by Carolyn Mraz).  All of these talismans and trinkets must have stories; they are not simply piles of junk.  From this premise, the three different unconnected plots emerge.  This musical’s book was written by Jaclyn Backhaus who had  major success with the terrific Men In Boats a few years ago.  The music and lyrics are credited to ten different artists.  There are some very tuneful songs here and also some blatant borrowings, notably the Once clone.

All of this material demands that it coalesce into a whole musical with a purpose.  That does not really happen.  Some plots are far stronger and clearer than others.  Dashes of comedy with dollops of tragedy.  Perhaps that is the plight of the female experience in early 20th Century America.  I loved the folk idea of the title to bind the three main character’s yearnings.  The music, however, did not commit to delineating three distinct genres (or one consistent one).  The overall effect is still experimental more than fully developed.

Folk Wandering has been creatively directed by Andrew Neisler.  Individual moments are very memorable.  A strong cast commits to this material with well-drawn characters.  The men here shine a little brighter than the women which is slightly harmful given the book’s focus.  Dan Tracy, DeMone and Seth Clayton were all linked in one section and developed heart-tugging emotions through their supporting characters.  In other scenes, they were each hilarious with expressively theatrical physicality.  Like many of the songs and scenes in Folk Wandering, these actors were an enjoyable part of an unsatisfying whole.

www.pipelinetheatre.org

Good for Otto (The New Group)

At some very early point in the exhausting three hour marathon entitled Good For Otto, a young girl began crying.  Apparently inconsolable, she was taken out of the theater by her mother.  Why was she at a David Rabe play?  I’ve only previously seen two of his plays, Hurlyburly and Sticks and Bones, one of the trilogy of Vietnam plays from the 1970s.  I enjoyed them both but neither are in the elementary school curriculum for Intro to Dramatic Theater.

Good For Otto concerns itself with mental illness.  Two therapists (Ed Harris and Amy Madigan) work in a mental health center near the Berkshires and do their heroic best to help their patients.  A who’s who of calamities are thrust upon us:  dead mothers, cutting, suicide, child abuse, hoarding, gay acceptance and hamster love, namely the Otto of the title.  Therapy sessions happen around and around, and back and forth, bizarrely interrupted by musical interludes of old songs.  These group character sing-a-longs are played at the piano by the hoarder when his story ended abruptly and for no apparent reason.  Music as healing power, bluntly and repeatedly themed, both in words and song.

About thirty minutes in, frankly, I was hating this play.  Then I started enjoying some sections.  Then super boredom set it.  Plus eye-rolling.  Then internal groaning as this play churned on and on, consuming the audience with its simplistic preachiness.  The director, Scott Elliott, made a critically bad decision to seat audience members on the stage.  During the second, less attended act, a man sitting center stage was holding up his head up while balancing his elbow on his knee, slumped over and visibly suffering.  Was this intentional or unintentional meta?

The cast was filled with veteran talents including F. Murray Abraham and, perhaps my favorite performer here, Mark-Linn Baker.  Overacting was the chosen route which admittedly made some of this watchable.  Long, insufferably overbaked storylines, particularly Mr. Abraham’s, were so very dull.  When this play finally ended a woman next to me said, “I need a pencil for editing.”  Kind words indeed as I’m not sure the interminable, unnecessary length is even the biggest problem.

www.thenewgroup.org

The Amateurs (Vineyard Theatre)

The Amateurs takes us back to 14th Century Europe where the Black Death is wiping out the population.  We meet a scrappy troupe of medieval pageant players.  They are travelling to outrun the disease with their pageant wagon, a movable stage which was used for centuries to present religious mystery or miracle plays.  The troupe wants to perfect their act, present it to the Duke and hopefully be rewarded with permanent, safer residence within the city walls.  The story they are rehearsing is Noah’s Flood.

When the play opens, our actors are performing the seven deadly sins in mask, although one member has to play both envy and covetousness.  As they travel, they are losing members of their troupe to the plague.  While this all sounds very grim, The Amateurs is actually quite a bit lighter and funnier than expected.  The play is a mashup of situation comedy, history lesson, a challenge to authority, and “let’s put on a show” juxtaposed with a very good, but very long, meta section.  The playwright Jordan Thompson (Marjorie Prime) has a lot to say and is not afraid to take risks.

The scenic design by David Zinn (SpongeBob SquarePants, Fun Home) creates a black world; think a simple mound of darkly colored grass.  A nifty pageant wagon opens up with painted scenery which is used for rehearsals and performances.  One of the major themes in The Amateurs is the role of art during times of crisis and uncertainty.  How art evolves and comments on the human condition, as it did after the medieval period with the Renaissance.  Going even further, the play considers more contemporary parallels.

I cannot put my finger on what exactly was missing for me in The Amateurs.  I left the theater more conceptually impressed than intellectually and theatrically satisfied.  A fine production with a strong cast.  A unique play but slightly boring too.

www.vineyardtheatre.org

Jerry Springer – The Opera (The New Group)

Which of the following of these five things is the most unbelievable?  That Jerry Springer – The Opera is what it says?  That Jerry Springer – The Opera won the 2004 Olivier Award for Best New Musical?  That Jerry Springer – The Opera makes The Book of Mormon look like wholesome entertainment?  That The Jerry Springer Show is still on television having passed its 25th Anniversary?  That Republicans in the wake of another school shooting will actually do something about gun violence other than offer their prayers and condolences?  Too easy a multiple choice question probably.

The homepage for this television show recruits new guests and currently asks:  “Did you have a child with a transsexual or are you pregnant by a transsexual?”  “Are you ready to turn up and get lit and confront somebody?”  “Do you have a sexy job?”  Somehow this amalgam of trash has been turned in an opera.  Well, actually more of a musical with operatic flourishes.  The opening number starts:  “My mom used to be – My mom used to be – My mom – Used to be – My mom – Used to be my Dad.”  The lyrics of this show are laugh out loud hilarious. Crude, rude and as over the top as the source material.  Act I of this show is raunchy musical comedy wrongness.  I was howling throughout.

Frankly, it’s a bit hard to understand how this show took so long to get across the pond from London.  Yes, the second act is as blasphemous as anything I have ever seen, including a now PG rated The Book of Mormon.  The first half of this inspired lunacy is the real thrill here.  The second half is funny too but falls slightly short of sublime genius.  That I can use sublime genius and Jerry Springer in a sentence is enough to recommend this show.  Full credit and gratitude for this outrageously fun piece goes to the composer and lyricist Richard Thomas and the book writer Stewart Lee.

There is a song entitled “This is My Jerry Springer Moment.”  If the line “so dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians” tickles your funny bone, then there are hundreds of laughs in store for you here.  I did not actually count the laughs but there are way, way, way more than a few dozen.  I’ll say no more except that the music is terrific, the singing fantastic, the set totally on point, direction that precisely escalates the chaos and a perfect Tiffany Mann as Shawntel.  The New Group has scored a colossal success with Jerry Springer – The Opera.

www.thenewgroup.org

queens (Lincoln Center Theater)

Polish born playwright Martyna Majok wowed me a few seasons ago with Ironbound, the story of an immigrant woman waiting for the bus outside a run down New Jersey factory where she works.  Spanning twenty years and three relationships, this was a study in one woman’s attempt to find security – a decent living, a decent man – in a harsh world that does not value her existence.  An outstanding play, Ironbound is currently running in Los Angeles with Marin Ireland, who was brilliantly riveting in the role.

With her new play queens, Ms. Majok continues to spotlight the immigrant experience, this time on a more ambitious scale.  The action takes place in a basement apartment in Queens, NY in June 2017.  Like Ironbound, however, this one also spans a great deal of time and through various parts of the world between 2001 and 2017.  The play opens with a group of unrelated immigrant women living together, struggling to make ends meet.  One of them is leaving to return to Honduras.

Also like Ironbound, the play moves back and forth in time, and storylines are filled in.  The women hail from different countries including Poland, Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan.  All drawn to the melting pot and promise of America.  Or to escape.  Living difficult challenging lives with regrets, hopes and dreams.  A young woman arrives in search of her mother whom she has not seen for fifteen years.  Ana Reeder, in a remarkably complex performance, plays Renia.  She left Poland many years ago and is taking in refugees for rent in her basement.

Over the course of nearly three hours, this epic unfolds.  Depending on your individual perspective, queens will provoke multiple feelings.  Empathy, which is sorely lacking in America at the moment.  Sadness, such as a fellow theatergoer who was bawling at the end, the raw emotions perhaps too real for her.  Disgust, for the way human beings treat each other.  Add in marvel too, as you grasp the sheer determination and inner strength of these women as they navigate their complicated lives.

Danya Taymor directed this piece which is being presented at the small Claire Tow Theater in a superlative staging.  Each actress is astonishingly real, some inhabit more than one character.  Laura Jellinek’s set design is simply amazing.  When you walk in the theater, you notice birds painted on the back wall, flying away, in various levels of focus.  A large ceiling hangs in mid-air.  Women may have the glass ceiling to contend with but immigrant women have the basement ceiling.  This specific production of queens is not to be missed.

www.lct.org/lct3

www.geffenplayhouse.org/ironbound

Miles for Mary (Playwrights Horizons)

Playwrights Horizons has kicked off a new Redux Series on top of its regular programming.  This effort is focused on allowing worthy off-off Broadway plays, often with extremely limited runs, another opportunity to be appreciated and in a larger venue.  Miles for Mary was created by The Mad Ones, written by its cast and director, Lila Neugebauer (The Antipodes, The Wolves).  In the riches of New York theater it’s often difficult to see every great piece, especially when rave reviews come late into a short run.  After seeing this play, I am extraordinarily excited for this series and thankful that this exceptional work has been showcased.

Miles for Mary is about a school in Garrison, Ohio, circa 1988-1989.    The setting is a teacher’s room with slogans on the wall like “Do More.”  There’s the table, the desk, the coffee pot and the teachers.  The play opens with a discussion on the upcoming school year’s annual telethon.  Miles for Mary raises scholarship funds in honor of a promising student athlete who was tragically killed in a car accident years earlier.  The teachers are seen first negotiating this year’s fundraising theme.

Amidst this apparently good natured exercise is workplace tension extraordinaire.  Everyone is trying their darndest to get along.  Passive aggressive behavior oozes.  Stretched out over many meetings leading up to the telethon, the teachers all become more irritating and more irritable.  Filled with all kinds of psychobabble mumbo jumble about feelings, the result is outrageously hilarious.  At some point, Miles for Mary becomes a stand-in for any staff meeting with opinionated, pretentious, pandering group dynamics.

Everyone in this cast was excellent.  Marc Bovino as the nerdy, tightly wound AV guy.  Joe Curnette as the committed but possibly dimwitted coach and health teacher.  Michael Dalto as the group’s leader who over embraces sharing yet tries to lead discussions with a stopwatch.  Amy Staats as Brenda, on speakerphone since she’s out with some illness but still part of this committee.  Stephanie Wright Thompson as the track suit wearing, coffee drinking, quip hurling firecracker.  Stacey Yen as the new member of the committee, just trying to be helpful yet bring fresh new ideas to the group.

Miles for Mary is a play for anyone who has ever been in a meeting and wanted to strangle someone who says stupid things.  Or maybe Miles for Mary is a mirror for those pedantic fools who babble speak about nothing.  Gorgeously paced, this play ranges from extremely silly to incredibly intense and uncomfortable.  Miles for Mary is great theater.  I hope this play becomes a staple across regional theaters everywhere.

www.themadones.org

www.playwrightshorizons.org

Hey, Look Me Over! (Encores!)

For Encore’s 25th anniversary, the first entry this year is not an underappreciated or forgotten musical.  Instead, selections from nine shows which have not yet been picked for a seven performance revisit.  Lucille Ball’s Wildcat from 1960 about a rugged gal who dreams of striking oil, famous for the song “Hey, Look Me Over!” titles this collection.  A Hungarian immigrant engineering professor helps guide a football team in 1962’s All American, book by Mel Brooks.  The 1957 Lena Horne calypso flavored vehicle Jamaica.  A pair of Jerry Herman shows, Milk and Honey (1961) and Mack & Mabel (1974) wrap up the first act.

Bob Martin, the Man in Chair from The Drowsy Chaperone, is on hand to add humor between segments, thankfully.  We then plow on to the second half with an opening overture from Jule Styne’s Subways Are  For Sleeping (1961).  The 1960 Frank Loesser flop Greenwillow about a magical town where the eldest men must heed the “call to wander” leaving their women and children behind waiting for a return.  Sail Away, a 1961 Noel Coward show centering on a brash, bold American divorcee working as a hostess on a British cruise ship.  Finally, the crowd pleasing George M! from 1968 wraps things up with “Give My Regards to Broadway” and some much needed tap dancing to liven up the proceedings.

Hey, Look Me Over! is entertaining in an analytical way for aficionados of musical theater.  The hypothesis:  despite their flaws, are these shows worth revisiting.  The conclusion:  mostly not.  With a talented cast and a sumptuous orchestra there are high points.  Reed Birney and Judy Kuhn singing “Once Upon a Time” from All American.  Clifton Duncan’s soaring vocals in “Never Will I Marry” from Greenwillow.  And the show which felt most revivable, Mack & Mabel, about Mack Sennett and the silent movie era.  “Movies Were Movies” and “Look What Happened to Mabel” were beautifully performed by Douglas Sills and Alexandra Socha.  However, a jukebox of flops, near misses or dated minor successes does not scream out for an encore in this moderately entertaining compilation.

www.nycitycenter.org

Hangmen (Atlantic Theater Company)

Martin McDonagh is currently nominated for two Academy Awards as the writer and co-producer of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. As a playwright, his resume includes The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Cripple of Inishmaan, and The Pillowman.  Given Mr. McDonagh’s track record and this play’s title, it’s a safe bet that Hangmen will be at least ominous in tone.  By the end, this dark comedy lands firmly in inky black territory, at night, without the benefit of any moonlight while wearing an eye mask.  Hangmen is fantastic.

Set in the mid-1960s in Lancashire, England, the play is first about a man named Harry (Mark Addy) who hangs other men sentenced to death.  He is considered the second best executioner in the land after Albert (Maxwell Caulfield).  While Albert has more hangings to his credit, they were Nazis, so those deaths have “an asterisk” when comparing body count.  The opening scene shows one such episode in a gallows with a boy protesting his innocence.  Two years later, hanging has since been abolished.  Harry, his wife and daughter now own a pub filled with assorted characters.  One day, a wily stranger appears.

Hangmen is mesmerizing, combining terrifying thoughts and ideas with a liberal dose of comedy.  The play sheds a light on attitudes back in the 1960s while also exaggerating the relentless desire for celebrity, no matter what the cost.  The entire cast is superb throughout.  Each character is distinct and realistic, yet theatrical.  The words are even better, eliciting a “wow” from my mouth on numerous occasions.  Hangmen is another triumph for the Atlantic Theater Company.

www.atlantictheater.org

⊂PORTO⊃ (WP Theater)

In the very funny, very smart ⊂PORTO⊃, Kate Benson has a lot to say.  Not only is she the playwright, she is also the narrator, commentator, thought-bubble maker and humorist playing the ⊂ ⊃ of the title.  Porto is our main character, a single woman in Brooklyn, living life but filled with all the standard, almost required, anxieties of today.  The play begins in darkness listening to musings from ⊂ ⊃ about the making of sausage casings.  Stay with me, please.

When the curtain opens, we are in a hipster bar with foie gras sausages on the menu.  Delicious or revolting animal abuse?  The smarmy bartender (Noel Joseph Allain) thinks one thing and Porto’s friend Dry Sac (Leah Karpel, perfect) is clearly, and drunkenly, on the other side of the argument.  Dry Sac doesn’t eat very much, “just olives and bitterness.”  How we think about ourselves and others, and what we think and why, is the terrain we travel in this play, primarily from a woman’s perspective.  The journey is rich, complex, silly, recognizable, witty and awkward, like life itself.

⊂Porto> is structured with our playwright’s voice walking us through yet also commenting on the action and scene changes.  This is my second Kate Benson play, the first being A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes.  Also very funny, that play used sports commentators narrating the action of a family Thanksgiving.  If we are keeping score, Ms. Benson is 2-0 with WP Theater.  Both plays were splendidly directed by Lee Sunday Evans to not only coax out the humor but also the humanity of the characters. 

A coproduction with The Bushwick Starr and in association with New Georges, WP Theater has mounted an outstanding production in all facets.  The set design, lighting, direction and casting are all excellent.  These actors fully inhabit their roles, yet the audience has the luxury of filling in the details with people we know or stereotypes we winkingly know about.  Julia Sirna-Frest plays Porto in an exquisite match of character and performer.  You want to see what happens to her long after this plays ends.

WP Theater focuses on promoting female artists. Mission accomplished with this outstanding play and this production.  If you want to try off-Broadway, this is a great opportunity to see what all the fuss is all about.  Approachable, offbeat, clever, smart, thoughtful and hilarious, ⊂Porto⊃ is just about perfect theater.  Oh, did I forget to mention the ending?  Extraordinarily memorable.

www.wptheater.org