Contrasting the persecution of witches during the 17th Century with our current climate seems like an interesting idea.  Unfortunately Becky Nurse of Salem is a jumbled assortment of ideas with underdeveloped characters and a half-baked premise.

“My name is Becky Nurse and I’ll be your tour guide.”  She is literally a tour guide of a witches museum in Salem.  She is also a descendant of a witch who was burned at the stake many generations ago.  As a result, her knowledge is better than anyone else’s or perhaps not.  Our guide enjoys liquid lunches at the bar of her high school crush Bob (Bernard White).

During one particular tour for a group of nuns, she drops some inappropriate language.  Her boss Shelby (Tina Benko) promptly fires her.  Becky decides to hire a witch (Candy Buckley) to give her a plan.  Her revenge follows which involves breaking and entering followed by jail time.

There is the one dimensional buffoon called The Jailer (Thomas Jay Ryan) who torments poor misbehaved Becky.  Added to this mix is a granddaughter Gail (Alicia Crowder) who is in a mental hospital after watching her mother overdose in a pharmacy.  Gail also has an older boy love interest (Julian Sanchez).

Toward the end of the first act we hear “Lock her up.  Kill the witch.  Lock her up.”  References are drawn to today’s headlines but then the play reverts back to a bizarre juxtaposition of family drama, substance abuse withdrawals, hallucinations, prison abuse antics and a love story.  None of these plot points are fully explored so it is difficult to care about any of them.

Occasionally arrows are slung at easy targets such as “the Sackler’s should be in fucking jail”.  Becky’s boss will visit her in jail and find it difficult to balance herself while talking and sitting on the toilet seat.  Much time is spent garnering laughs which sometimes amuse.  “It’s not like witches have malpractice insurance” was a fun quip.

The play also harks back to 1692 and Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible.  A connection is made between Miller’s seventeen year supposed seducer of John Proctor.  In fact, we are told, she was really only eleven.  That moral quandary is likened to his lustful obsession with Marilyn Monroe.

Director Rebecca Taichman (Indecent, School Girls or The Mean African Girls Play) does not create a scenario where Sarah Ruhl’s skit-like structure can gel.  Many performances are flat or worse.  Deidre O’Connell (last year’s Tony winner for Dana H.) performs the title character.  She gives her all in a loud manic caricature that is at least fun to watch.  Both of the male love interests are solidly believable and nicely grounded amidst the confusing turmoil.

One of the conclusions made in Becky Nurse of Salem is that the witches were found guilty since “there were no women on that jury”.  That may be true.  If you look around today, our current environment has plenty of women who gleefully embody the stereotypical finger pointing moralistic hysteria of that puritan era.  That strikes me as far more compelling than the comparisons being made on the stage.

Becky Nurse of Salem is playing at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater through December 31, 2022.

www.lct.org

“Can we think one second how one rises from the dreck?”  Will Arbery’s highly theatrical play Evanston Salt Costs Climbing might give us a clue – or even some hope – as we endure life’s rough storms.  Before we see a glimmer of that answer, however, there is much angst to absorb.  The experience is riveting, non-linear in its structure and profoundly thought provoking.

Jane Maiworm (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) is the Assistant Public Works Director in charge of the snow removal operations for Evanston, Illinois.  Her employees are Peter (Jeb Kreager) and Basil (Ken Leung) who have the natural camaraderie of two men who have spent years riding in a truck together.  The play takes place over three Januarys from 2014 through 2016.

Maiworm, as she is called, is reading a newspaper article in which her name is mentioned.  The newspaper headline is the title of this play.  Climate change is certainly a thematic element here but, in a greater sense, the destabilization of individuals in this very specific corner of the universe drives the drama.  There is a soul crushing darkness in this play despite its comedic moments.

Peter announces early on that he wants to kill himself.  In another early scene, Maiworm informs that the reporter who wrote the article has killed himself.  Later on we hear that “the world would be a better place if we all killed ourselves”.  Every character is intense, including Maiworm’s daughter (Rachel Sachnoff) who may or may not be the most broken of them all.

Maiworm has to deal with the concept of heated permeable pavers as the new technology for snow clearance.  That would result in Peter and Basil losing their jobs.  She frets.  Jane Jr. is adrift, seemingly unfocused and seeing no future for her or her generation on this overwhelmingly haunted planet.  What happened to her?

Peter wears his heart on his sleeve.  Basil is much more carefully secretive.  His speech about his nightmares is revealing and adds to the surrealness of seemingly everyday concerns.  All four are observing, in their own way, “the new Rome in the days before the fall”.

Scenic Designer Matt Saunders’ stage is filled with two enormous warehouse doors which open and close for various locations including truck drives to salt and clear the roads.  The Lighting (Isabella Byrd) and Sound (Mikaal Sulaiman) Designs are menacing and extremely evocative.  The grinding of the doors seems to be the mechanical unoiled sound of America’s aging machinery.

Director Danya Taymor clearly orchestrates these troubling souls and their attempts to make sense of the world and their place within it.  Moments of the ordinary are as effective as are the fantastical dreamscapes.  Every character can make you feel sad but each of them does contain a light inside.  That is never in doubt despite the darkness.

While it may be hard to imagine laughter, there is humor in this piece.  All four actors are excellent in their finely etched performances.  They battle brutal storms, both physically and metaphorically, while searching for a path (or attempting to stay on one).  Will Arbery’s play cares about people as much as they care about each other.

I did say there was some hopefulness amidst the varying levels of despair.  There is indeed.  It may be that our chance for progress lies not in our minds but in an ability to act and not just wait for something to happen.  Maiworm strives to use her administrative skills to “fix some specific tininess”.  A notion worthy of consideration.

Evanston Salt Costs Climbing is being presented by The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center through December 18, 2022.

www.thenewgroup.org

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/heroesofthefourthturning

The screen projects a moody and relentless drive along a very long road.  That might represent imagery for this particular story.  For me it unhelpfully underscored how long and boring Who Killed My Father was to endure.

Édouard Louis adapted this memoir and is the performer in this solo show.  The material covers the same territory as his History of Violence, also based on a memoir and directed by Thomas Ostermeier.  Both vehicles cover his homosexuality and the negativity he experiences.  This one, however, focuses on his father.  At fifty years old, Dad suffered severe health issues which are described as a result of life choices.  The play interestingly attempts to recast the blame on his behavior toward his son to a much broader canvas – society as a whole.

Like the previous work, this one vacillates between deeply morose and lip synching “Barbie Girl” as a young teen to the horror of his parents.  The father is represented as an empty chair on stage.  Perhaps this memoir and subsequent adaptation is therapeutic for Mr. Louis.  I felt I was sitting through someone’s therapy without being compensated to do so.  Ah, the opposite.  I paid to be there.

schaubühne Berlin and Théâtre de la Ville Paris are presenting this show at St. Ann’s Warehouse.  In addition to the excellent History of Violence, schaubühne helped us theater lovers during Covid by streaming some recordings of previous shows.  I saw both Bella Figura and Professor Bernhardi during that time.  The high quality of these productions caused me to see this troupe live once again.  This one is a huge miss for me.

There is a hint within Who Killed My Father that suggests that the elder man may have been gay or at least confused.  That morsel gets a moment and includes a picture of Dad dressed as a Majorette. The moment quickly flies past as society takes the brunt of this man’s ire.  The analysis of this personal journey might be intellectually captivating.  As a piece of theater, however, the tale drones on despite a short ninety minute running time.

Who Killed My Father is running at St. Ann’s Warehouse through June 5, 2022.

www.stannswarehouse.org

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/historyofviolence

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/professorbernhardi

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/bellafigura

The set suggests a funeral with a wreath “in loving memory of Pap”.  There are balloons, one of which says Happy Valentine’s Day.  A “congratulations” sign.  Smoke billows from the barbeque.  Fat Ham takes place in a family’s backyard somewhere in the South.  By the end, this theatrical supernova written by James Ijames will have exploded into one of the wildest, most satisfying, deeply introspective and phenomenally hilarious riffs on Hamlet ever.

A small party is about to commence to commemorate not King Hamlet’s death but Claudius marrying Gertrude within the week.  Well not exactly but very close.  This hastily assembled barbeque will celebrate Rev and Tedra’s nuptials one week after her husband was killed in prison.  As Juicy strings Christmas lights up per his mom’s wishes, he and friend Tio engage in some banter.  Ghosts are the topic.  Tio sees Juicy’s “dead daddy walking around the yard in the middle of the afternoon…”  The ghost entrance is thrilling and the Hamlet references begin.

Former Uncle and brother of the deceased and now newly crowned stepdad Rev (Billy Eugene Jones) is a tough guy who has little patience for the “soft” Juicy.  Our fat ham, you see, is not a “real man” and his predilections are not embraced in this small town.

Mom is a sexy and wise whirlwind of goodness and self-preservation.  She loves her son, sees him clearly and yet he comes in second or, perhaps, third with the new pecking order.  She knows how to party and be the center of attention with zero inhibitions.  Her performance on the picnic table slays.  Nikki Crawford is riveting in a role filled with the quandaries of life’s choices and important survival techniques such as not overanalyzing situations.  Kudos to Darrell Grand Moultrie’s choreography throughout.

Tedra’s friend Rabby (Benja Kay Thomas) is invited and she brings her son and daughter.  Tedra is described as “semi-churchy but honestly she just wanna drink and praise the Lord”.  She will be successful in that regard today.  Both of her kids know Juicy.  Larry (Calvin Leon Smith) is a Marine.  Opal (Adrianna Mitchell) is unhappily wearing a dress.  Both of them harbor secrets.  Both care deeply for Juicy.  Scenes between the younger generation are philosophical, raw and movingly real.

Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet struggles with whether, or how, to avenge his father’s death.  He questions his own sanity.  Juicy faces the same scenario and thankfully has his cousin Horatio, I mean Tio, as his trusted confidant.  In an ensemble of extraordinarily fine characterizations, Chris Herbie Holland achieves bullseye perfection.  We all witness the comings and goings (is there even a fourth wall?) but through Tio’s eyes the view is literally enhanced.  The video game monologue alone should become legendary.

Fat Ham is a play written with surprising turns and zingers galore.  Director Saheem Ali allows menace to creep in but never at the expense of riotous comedy.  There is a sadness which never completely disappears but is instead morphed into the vivid personalities which burst out of tragedy into a zenith of mind-altering positivity.  The story arc of Mr. Ijames’ play is breathtaking and the myriad of devices employed to develop character are awesome.

Juicy is unabashedly proud, profoundly thoughtful, edgily vindictive, smart mouthed, shyly unsure, self-doubting and trapped in a world where his inner and outer beauty crave a spotlight bigger and brighter than the one in which he resides.  A tall acting order, indeed, not to mention the facial expressions required throughout.  Marcel Spears’ performance is a triumph in, pardon me, a very juicy role.

How does one break free of the cycles of violence, Tio asks.  Juicy’s Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail and his Pop went to jail.  What’s before that?  Slavery he says.  Fat Ham is about breaking the chains of all things which constrain people from living freely, honestly and happily.  A raucous, joyous piece of theater with a brilliant creative team, Fat Ham is a revelation and exudes excellence from ghostly start to exuberant finish.

Fat Ham won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is being performed at The Public Theater through July 3, 2022.

www.publictheater.org

Idiotic fun can be had watching the uneven but nicely acted play To My Girls.  A bunch of thirty something gay friends have rented a home in Palm Springs for a weekend of revelry.  Bon mots, accusations, heavy drinking and a murder are just a few of the treats in store for those looking for a much lighter weight The Boys in the Band update.

The jokes pour in and cover the expected targets.  “On my drive I saw an armadillo that looked like Kelly Ann Conway”.  One gets upset when the “orange dipshit” is referenced.  He warns “do not say that name in the house; I didn’t pack enough sage”.

The title refers to  a toast celebrating these “girls”.  In an inspired bit of needling the gender politics of today, the cast addresses the audience and provides a “gender pronoun apology”.  They are going to refer to themselves as girls, like it or not.  Another quip follows later about being put through the “pronoun ice capades”.

Curtis is the first to arrive having made the reservation.  He promptly begins making a blender drink.  He pours a little mixer in and then an entire bottle of booze.  It’s party time!  Curtis is the “A” gay of the group; supremely gorgeous, incredibly narcissistic, extraordinarily slutty and spiraling toward the age of forty.  Que tragedie!

Jay Armstrong Johnson is excellent in a role which could be very unlikable.  In order for this play to work, the audience must see why the others love this imperfect friend.  Maulik Pancholy plays Castor, the self-deprecating one who has always pined for the beautiful boy.  One of them notes that “you two are stuck in this Edward Albee play”.  Yes this all sounds a trifle cliché but the chemistry on stage makes it work.

The heat seeking juggernaut is the character of Leo who is black and flamboyantly fun.  Light racial jokes are tossed around such as “not bottoming for white guys doesn’t make you the gay Frederick Douglass”.  Britton Smith is terrific in the role which evolves into the moral center of a play flaunting immorality as a badge of honor.

The girls go to a bar on night one and Castor brings home Omar (Noah J. Ricketts) which turns the plot into a darker yet jovial place.  Castor cannot believe Omar would be interested in him.  Others are horny.  Recriminations will fly!  Relationships will be tested!  Will there be a happy ending?

JC Lee’s script does spout some messaging meant to empower happiness, self-acceptance, forgiveness and the unshakable bonds created through shared experiences.  Then there’s the real debate about which is the best Brittany Spears album.

Snarls at pop culture icons hit the funny bone.  “I am only nervous when I watch Taylor Swift do choreography”.  A new gay dating app called “Hoopler” is for gays who like basketball.  These barbs are more effective than some of the preachy moments about virtue signaling and pointed critiques of a so-called misguided younger generation.

There is a wonderful speech near the end of the play which provides a second meaning for the title of this enjoyable comedy.  Many things have changed for the gay community since the pre-Stonewall Boys in the Band was written.  Apparently, however, many other things have not.  To My Girls certainly showcases gay men in a less closeted way.  But the skeletons are still there.  And they can be haunting.  A trusted group of friends may be the only antidote.

To My Girls is scheduled to run through April 24, 2022 at Second Stage’s Off-Broadway house, the Tony Kiser Theater.

www.2st.com

Hart Island

Intriguing is the first word which came to mind after viewing the unusual and captivating Hart Island.  For those who take this journey the experience will linger.  The scope is as small as a wave lapping on a shoreline and as big as the gargantuan eons of Earth’s history.

Tracy Weller wrote this heady meditation about the largest mass gravesite in the world.  Since the Civil War, a million people have been buried there.  These souls were on the fringes of society; the poor, the homeless, the unclaimed.  The island itself has long existed on the periphery of society with no access allowed.  The recent COVID health crisis brought increased attention as the daily burials grew from 25 to 120 per week.

The installation is a multi-level, multimedia explosion of quiet reflection.  Images tease.  Ms. Weller portrays a narrator in a recording studio.  She is taping the voiceover to  New York Journey’s “Lifecycles and Systems:  The Seen & Unseen Islands of New York, The Natural & Unnatural Human Experience”.  Some of the material is upsetting and the Narrator has to pace herself.

Many of New York’s islands are covered along the way.  The currently named Roosevelt Island was once known for penitentiaries, asylums and hospitals before its rebranding in 1973 for residential housing.  Isolation is a theme which flows through this show both physically via the islands themselves and also amongst the lives which are touched by them directly or indirectly.

This travelogue of island history is supplemented with six individuals represented only by their initials.  They are specific and unknowable.  Each has a connection to a story which haunts them in some way.  While the recording narrative propels the show forward on one level, the individual laments practically beg for reconciliation and healing.

Another level of engagement is the one experienced when you enter the space.  Dirt runs the length of the environment and is peppered with artifacts.  Is this a dump?  An archeological dig?  A baseball, cookie tin and water pitcher lay there.  Although you may be watching a moment in time, the perspective may also be interpreted as a recorded vision of New York (and human society in general) if this show were encapsulated and revealed in the future.

The headiness of the material commands attention.  Characters intersect and separate.  Tales are told in a non-linear fashion.  The listener might fill in the blanks or may simply choose to consider the painful indifferences of a troubled human race.  Hart Island is gloomy, hopeful, mesmerizing, challenging and altogether unique.

Kristjan Thor directed this visually and mentally stimulating rumination. The tones range from darkly somber and deeply intimate to delicately confrontational and breathtakingly exasperating.  Christopher and Justin Swader’s set design is creatively evocative of the various locales but also prompts engagement.  Take the ladder down and peer into this diorama.  Hart Island demands gazing at the periphery.

That gazing is enhanced through a production design that can be dimly foreboding, intentionally obscuring or starkly illuminating.  The technical designs for lighting (Christina Tang), sound and music (Phil Carluzzo), and video and projection (Yana Biryukova) are memorably atmospheric.

All seven performances are intensely realized.  The script has them articulating words, sentences and monologues, sometimes in complex unison.  There is an element of group therapy concerning profound personal loss and a need for salvation.  Movement is deliberate as is the language spoken.  The dialogue is storytelling and utterances in equal measure.

Humans are an infinitesimal speck along the expanse of time.  Ms. Weller makes us – and herself as Narrator – look at some of our failings and summon redemption.  Rather than ignore the islands and relative isolations we create, this show asks us to look intently and deliberately at them.  As an added bonus there are many tidbits scattered throughout such as the meaning of eutrophication and the General Slocum steamship disaster.

Hart Island is presented by Mason Holdings.  Their mission is to “create intimate, experiential theatre inspired by the unseen and unheard”.  This theatrical event should be seen and heard both both for its expansive intellectual reach and its extraordinarily immersive empathy.  Discussion afterwards is ensured.

Hart Island is being performed at The Gym at Judson through April 9, 2022.

www.masonholdings.org

www.thegymatjudson.com

The Daughter-in-Law

For nearly three decades the Mint Theater has been reviving forgotten plays.  With one exception I have seen every production since 2007.  This troupe can be counted on for exquisitely detailed presentations of thought provoking concerns from yesteryear.  D.H. Lawrence’s The Daughter-in-Law is the first one to be revived a second time; the first was a success in 2003.

The English setting is a coal miner’s district in 1912.  Rising dissatisfaction has led to a national strike vote.  The walkout is to begin in six days.  Mr. Lawrence takes the action inside a family home.  Much of the storytelling takes place around the dining room table in the days before televisions and technology.  The glimpse is into a bygone era yet the issues are timeless.

Luther and Joe are the sons of Mrs. Gascoyne.  They are miners with soot and a broken arm worn as badges of honor.  A neighbor stops over with some distressing news.  Her daughter is pregnant.  Newly married Luther had dalliances with her a few months prior.  What to do?

The scheming, domineering mother has some ideas despite her contemptuous relationship with her daughter-in-law.  Plots are hatched.  Layers are peeled away from the outer shells of these characters.  Internal uncertainties bubble to the surface and an intriguing drama unfolds.

The Daughter-in-Law is written in an East Midlands dialect known as Ilson, a combination of Old English with lingering Norse influences from centuries of Viking rule.  The barely literate men contrast starkly with the better educated daughter of the title.  Some fellow theatergoers seemed to struggle with understanding the accents.  A helpful program glossary illuminates the period terminology.  I had no problem following along and felt immersed in this family’s tribulations.

Why did this woman marry him?  On one level this play is about women and choices in an era where they suffocate in domesticity.  The beauty of this piece is the frankness of how this material is discussed.  Mr. Lawrence saw life as it was and did not censor reality.  Famous for his controversial style in novels such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover, he pushed boundaries.

This particular work was never produced in his lifetime.  He wrote eight plays and only two were mounted in very small scale productions.  In the 1960’s, four decades after he died, the Royal Court presented three of them.  They were finally hailed as realistic masterpieces of English working-class life.

A 2022 staging is interesting timing.  The author was quieted due to his frank discussion of truthful realities that large segments of society wanted buried.  America’s current climate is awfully similar.  The contrast of considering century old dynamics against the world today is definitely part of the Mint DNA.  You appreciate the play and the production but also the historical relevance which is shockingly not so dated.

High quality is synonymous with the Mint Theater.  The Daughter-in-Law is no exception.  Everything is fine from the acting and direction to the sets, costumes and lighting which are perfectly proportioned in the intimate City Center Stage II space.  A dusty old relic sparkles back to life once again.

The Daughter-in-Law is running through March 20, 2022.

www.mintheater.org

Jane Anger

If you, like me, find the full title of this play absurdly compelling, a pleasurable treat awaits!  The Lamentable Comedie of JANE ANGER, that Cunning Woman, and also of Willy Shakefpeare and his Peasant Companion, Francis, Yes and Also of Anne Hathaway (also a Woman) Who Tried Very Hard.

The year is 1606.  The plague is raging and people are “freaking out”.  Social distancing is de rigueur.  A pony length is the safe distance for this era.  Of course that requires the play’s characters to do “the pony” now and again.  Silliness rules and laughs are abundant.

Jane arrives wearing a 17th century medical beak.  Her audience learns that this is a great time to be a cunning woman.  She used to be a whore but is “now more ambitious”.  Jane will eventually make her way to visit William Shakespeare in London.  He is currently isolated amidst the death carts picking up bodies in the street.  The two share a past which inspired some of the Bard’s love sonnets.

Apparently the plague is causing Willy distress resulting in writer’s block.  This “voice of all people” is a raging egomaniac telling us that he is “famous and timeless” and has “universal appeal”.  Going into quarantine “I’m expected to be more prolific and timely than the last time”.  His contemporaries like Thomas Middleton are ridiculed:  “they think it is provocative to break genre”.

The Francis of the title is an aspiring actor who pretends to be sixteen and strongly desires a role as an ingenue in one of Willy’s works.  An Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First?” interchange using the word Sir is hilarious.  A renamed Frankie has a pamphlet of a play called King Leir.  A bit of thievery might be the cure for writer’s block.  King Lear effusively flows from the pen.

The plot exists as a mechanism to deliver a multitude of verbal and physical hijinks.  Chamber pots and sexual organs.  The sporting of a very cool earring and rapier wit.  A very sticky pudding.  Jane Anger revels in sophomoric cleverness and the actors chew the scenery.  One of them quite literally.

Jane arrives to help Willy get his proverbial shit together.  They negotiate a deal.  Jane Anger is a writer from history who was the first women to publish a full length defense of her sex in English.  This play is a farcical jumble bashing male superiority through the wide eyed lens of a feminist rant.

Willy’s wife Anne Hathaway emerges from her historical obscurity to join the merriment.  Willy describes her as sickening but she is immune from the plague.  She caught and survived it when caring for their now dead son Hamnet.  The ridiculous amusements are non-stop.

Michael Urie is a smashingly unhinged Shakespeare enveloped in a cloak of mancave realness.  Amelia Workman is a strong and confident Jane but do not mess with her.  The same can be said for Anne Hathaway (playwright Talene Monahon).  This Anne knows she is insufferable and everyone hates her (like another similarly named woman from a more modern era).

Last, and most certainly not least, is the magnificent clown Ryan Spahn who portrays Francis.  If Mr. Urie is unhinged then Mr. Spahn must be classified as deranged.  All four performers are excellent and this show is gleeful fun.  The ending was a trifle anticlimactic after all the proceeding lunacy but that’s a quibble.

If you want to go to the theater and have a great time, make haste to see Jane Anger.  Ms. Monahon’s wildly enjoyable comedy revises the notion that revenge is a dish best served cold.  This one brings the heat and mercilessly wounds its intended victims, also know as men.

Jane Anger is playing at the New Ohio Theatre in Greenwich Village through March 26, 2022.

www.janeangerplay.com

www.newohiotheatre.org