Category: Off-Broadway Reviews

Near the end of his oral dissertation on the arc of misinformation and propoganda in America, Josh Fox makes a concluding statement.  “We are the first generation to know what the global apocalypse will look like.”  Your proclivity to agreeing with that idea will inform your affinity to The Truth Has Changed.

When listening to one sided downloads of information, I try to maintain a healthy degree of skepticism.  The terrain covered in Mr. Fox’s monologue is quite large.  His opinions are thoughtful and unabashedly liberal.  His ability to communicate outrage is extremely effective.  This is a personal story and a frighteningly universal one.  I felt the weight on my shoulders by the end.  These are heavy times.

“How do we know what’s true?”  That’s the simple question which starts this account.  Josh Fox is a famous documentary filmmaker and activist.  He begins by discussing frackers coming to the Delaware River, the source of much drinking water in our area.  He made a film Gasland in 2010 focusing on impacts felt in communities where hydraulic fracturing was taking place.

Fracking releases hydrogen sulfide and methane gas.  Since that is not a naturally occurring event, rational minds might want to understand the side effects.  Seems a logical question to ask.  Mr. Fox did that and filmed conversations with people across their kitchen table.  A scratchy feeling going down a man’s throat.  Nine stillborn calves.  His documentary would win a Sundance Film Festival prize and receive an Academy Award nomination.

The most riveting part of The Truth Has Changed is recapping what happened after film was released.  The oil media machine’s 721 page hit sheet refuting the film.  Death threats.  Ecoterrorists burning down his parent’s shed.  A conclusion that Gasland was “propoganda that the Nazi Goebbels would be proud of.”  Q&A segments on Fox News editing and misappropriating his words.  Then, a sad realization that the government started buying into the hyperbole; notably, Obama, Biden and Hillary Clinton.

Misinformation is not a new strategy in America.  Mr. Fox makes this history clear.  Lying about the weapons of mass destruction used to sell the Gulf War.  A faked Gulf of Tonkin incident which allowed President Johnson to expand the Vietnam War.  The Sedition Act of 1918 which enabled the government to incarcerate Eugene Debs for speaking out against World War I.  His views are crystal clear:  “war is always sold as a lie.”

This jam-packed information download moves from the oil wars to environmental concerns.  He viewed the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from the air despite the FAA’s initial blockade.  The scale was immense.  His commentary:  “if they can cover up the greatest environmental disaster in the U.S., what chance does the truth have?”

Climate change is extensively discussed in The Truth Has Changed.  Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica’s activities resulting in Facebook posts spreading misinformation using your personal pyschographics.  The spreading of fear in “supersized kaleidoscopic doses.”  A fueling of stochastic terrorism which is the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act.  In our twitterverse, this is a wholly believable evaluation of America right now.

As a theatrical experience, Josh Fox weaves a lot of information into a very full but ultimately digestible download.  Personal stories resonate best since they are fresh information to consume.  There are a lot of teaching moments which occasionally feel like classroom lecturing.  If you are interested in finding some truths – or at least challenging your beliefs – this show has much to offer.  My attention was held throughout.

The oil industry is “using the DNA of the last mass extinction to fuel the current one.”  This show is depressing.  Josh Fox, however, is pushing for change.  “Change is truth.”  His plea?  “Dive in.”  As Australia burns these past weeks, why is it that science is under attack?  The only explanation I can get my head around is corporate profits and short-term greed.  The truth has indeed changed.  What’s next?

The Truth Has Changed is part of the Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theater.  The last performance is January 19, 2020.  The show will be performed at Miami Dade College from March 12-22, 2020.

www.publictheater.org

www.mdclivearts.org

In February 2016, two artists paid $3,000 to travel on a cargo ship.  Their goal was to retrace the routes of the transatlantic slave triangle from the United Kingdom to Ghana to Jamaica, and back.  salt. is the lyrical rumination of that journey.

Selina Thompson has written the “story of my diaspora.”  Her very existence is tethered to “a people swept up and scattered across the world.”  She readily admits to her anger.  A citizen of the United Kingdom, her vision of Europe is one that is awash in blood.  A continent built on suffering, massacre and death.

Personal stories of racist experiences are used to introduce the person who will ultimately take this journey.  Her grandmother’s remembrance of being the only black child in school is particularly nauseating.  Over and over, she intones, “Europe pushes against me.  I push back.”

Ms. Thompson and an unnamed filmmaker partnered on this adventure.  On their ship were six white Italian officers and eighteen Filipino crew members.  Communication was difficult but the recognizable word “nigger” comes up at the dinner table.  There is no phone.  No internet.  No windows in their locked room.  Thoughts will germinate.

A block of salt provides the visual and physical manifestation of her rage.   The anger is directed toward everyone on the ship and then more broadly.  Imperialism, racism and capitalism decide who matters.  How do you crush centuries of history and the remaining crystals of hate still providing ample flavor to a morally undernourished human race?

Ms. Thompson’s sea journey takes her to Ghana.  She visits the notorious Elmina Castle “where people went through the door of no return.”  Built by the Portuguese in the latter stages of the 15th Century, the Dutch captured the fortress in 1637 and changed its purpose.  The building fueled the ever-growing slave trade with the Caribbean and Brazil.  What is it like being inside this facility as a descendant of slavery?  It’s like “being inside a migraine.”

A question asked stuck in my head.  “What should a site mourning the slaves look like?”  The poetry used to express feelings in this story are touchingly rendered yet stay firmly planted on the edge of outrage.  That balance is nicely handled by the unapologetically strong presence of Rochelle Rose.  Dawn Walton’s direction is a successful blend of emotional mysticism and controlled expressions of disgust.  Salt in the wounds, so to speak.

This show effectively raises concerns about the world today.  “Black Lives Matter because black death isn’t over.”  I expect the listening experience of this piece will be greatly varied depending on your personal development.  We all see things from our individual filters.  On the cargo ship, the Italians are considered white people.  Stories from my immigrant relatives suggest that classification took some time.  Admittedly, however, that took a lot less time than four hundred years of unconscionable oppression.

salt. is hard.  salt. is necessary for life.  salt. fuels our seas.  salt. is an essential nutrient.  salt. is highly recommended.  I listened.  I learned something.  I felt something.  I had admiration mixed with sadness and joy.  Selina Thompson’s voice will be undoubtedly be heard through your personal lens.  Hear! Hear!

www.publictheater.org

Imagine a world where the Palestinian flag is planted on the moon.  In Amir Nizar Zuabi’s play Grey Rock, one of his characters says “its so preposterous, it’s brilliant.”  Apparently this is my week for traveling into outer space, having just seen Or, An Astronaut Play, at the Tank.  Both plays explore dreams while commenting on societal oppression.  In this interesting exploration, the improbable is embraced from a voice not often heard on American stages.

Commissioned and produced by U.S. based Remote Theater Project, Mr. Zuabi is Palestine’s leading playwright and director.  This play celebrates the alienable right to dream.  For he and his people, “our dreams end at the checkpoint.”  Grey Rock is a visit to a world and those minds we hear about but seldom experience in the theater.

Yusuf (Khalifa Natour) is jogging at the start of this play.  His daughter Lila (Fidaa Zaidan) wants to know why.  His wife and her mother passed away a few years ago.  Dad is mysteriously coming and going from the house.  Does he have a ladyfriend?  Not exactly.  He is romancing his fantasy of building a rocket.  His ambitions are to fully reach the moon, not to create “a suborbital rocket.”

In his shed, blueprints and parts are being collected.  Money is a concern as he tries to fund his dream.  People in this small town are beginning to talk.  Is he working for the occupation?  He is expending so much cash that the rumors are intensifying.  Is he a collaborator?  His daughter has to defend him to her fiance Jawad (Alaa Shehada), an ordinary business man.  Why, she asks pointedly, does she have to disprove this lie?  Instead, why don’t the accusers have to prove that he is actually a collaborator?  In the internet age of America, we all can certainly relate to her dilemma.

Ivan Kevork Azazian portrays Fadel, a local food delivery truck driver.  He accidentally sees what Yusuf is working on.  He wanted to be a mechanical engineer and received a full scholarship to Rice University.  Love got in the way of his dream.  He’s now in his mid-twenties and unattached.  The thought of participating in this once-in-a-lifetime project is exciting.  Together, the two continue developing the rocket in secret.

There is obviously a significant amount of risk in building a rocket anywhere.  In Palestine, the stakes are unimaginably high.  Why did America reach the moon?  How can someone dream so big?  Yusuf’s passion is in direct conflict with his country’s oppressive regime.  “We compromise so much we can’t imagine what it’s like being a free people.”

The plot of Grey Rock is romantic both in its thoughtful depiction of fantastic dreams and in its much less successful soap opera love triangle.  A conflict scene at the end is completely unnecessary.  The philosophy, however, remains the central and most interesting aspect of this tale.

Yusuf ponders the American dream and the difference that is the Palestinian outlook.  In order to progress, he surmises, his people need to detach from this old land and its prophets.  America, by contrast, is not backward looking.  Their citizens can dream.  That is how they reached for the moon and succeeded.

That perspective is timely as Americans fight everyday between moving forward or backward in their beliefs and governance.  Palestinians may have their ancient prophets but plenty of religions have their ancient books.  Christians who feel morally obligated to dominate the American way of life are doing so with teachings from two thousand years ago.

Grey Rock may be a play about dreams, oppression and the Palestinian way of life.  I found the questions and commentary to be worldly and universal.  The Under the Radar Festival focuses on presenting different perspectives and stories.  This play enabled me to experience life from creative artist’s foreign worldview while simultaneously jarring my own.  I heard a warning loud and clear.  That’s something to really think about.

Grey Rock is being performed at the Public Theater until January 19, 2020.  Grey Rock will then travel to the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis (January 23-26), the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (January 30 – February 1) and to the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia (February 6-9).

www.thepublictheater.org

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A couple of years ago, playwright Lucas Hnath and Director Les Waters were working on a play called Dana H.  (That one is coming to New York in February at the Vineyard Theatre.)  During a conversation, Mr. Waters observed “well, it’s as if we’ve gone into a thin place at this point in the story.”  Mr. Hnath asked, “What’s The Thin Place?”  The response:  “oh you know, it’s the place where the line between this world and some other world is very thin.”

This tremendously talented playwright jotted down “The Thin Place” on a scrap of paper thinking it would be a good title for a play.  He “didn’t know what would happen in it; I just thought I’d like to write that play.”  In the program notes, he advises his audience, “the less you know, the better.”  That is true.

The stage is essentially bare with two comfortable chairs and a small table between them.  Hilda is sitting with a mug of tea.  She tells a story about her childhood and her love for her grandmother.  They practiced psychic mind games.  Grandma wanted to be able to communicate from the beyond in one of those thin places between our world and wherever the next world is.

In an excellent tight-lipped, anxiety-filled yet loosely modulated performance, Emily Cass McDonnell begins our journey to the supernatural.  She is a big fan of Linda (Randy Danson) who is a famous medium who communicates with the dead.  Emily has yet to connect with her grandmother. That’s the premise which begins this multi-dimensional tale filled with thoughtful ideas and structural twists and turns.  The Thin Place is, once again, another outstanding play from Lucas Hnath.

The relationship between these two individuals develop.  Belief systems are considered and challenged.  Two other characters  appear in the middle of the play (Kelly McAndrew and Triney Sandoval).  A party atmosphere is punctuated by wine and conversation.  Linda is working for a politician who does not connect with his constituents.  She is giving him her techniques as a spiritual adviser.  Is that moral to help someone insinuate themselves through mind control tricks?

The final section of the play is equally fascinating all the way until the final word is spoken.  This tale has so many layers.  The eeriness of a ghost story.  The sadness of a child’s relationship with a mother who felt possessed by evil spirits.  The inherent cynicism of human beings.  Powerful belief foundations.  Like his play, The Christians, Mr. Hnath sees complexity in his character’s motivations and thoughts.  This isn’t simply a play about the thin place between life and the afterlife.

Our brains and the thin place between ambiguity and observational fact is the space explored so effectively here.  Think about a creepy movie or personal experience.  Was that the wind or something more dangerous?  How our minds interpret information will come into play as an observer of this production.  An incredibly entertaining and original play, The Thin Place demands discussion afterward.

Les Waters’ direction is simple and his actors beautifully travel through the various moods and structural adjustments in this absorbing work.  The lighting design by Mark Barton is puzzling at first but becomes abundantly clear as the play progresses.  This is an unique production which stimulates the senses and feels wholly original.  The silence is as powerful as the noise.  How will your brain fill in those moments as you ponder this story and its unfolding?

This is my fifth time admiring a play written by Lucas Hnath.  Every one of them is excellent and highly recommended from Off-Broadway’s The Christians and Red Speedo to the two Broadway outings, Hillary and Clinton, and A Doll’s House, Part 2.  In our current golden age of drama, I expect this storyteller and his works will stand tall on the list of best plays from the early 21st Century period.

The Thin Place has been extended through January 26, 2020 at Playwrights Horizons.

www.playwrightshorizons.org

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theaterreviewsfrommyseat/adollshousepart2

In 1937, the Nazi Party was already in power.  Hitler had reoccupied the Rhineland and broken the Treaty of Versailles.  The Luftwaffe had been formed.  Jews were banned from the military.  The Nuremburg Laws had already gone into effect.  In this environment German playwright Ödön von Horváth wrote Judgment Day.

The setting is a train station in a very small village somewhere in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The time is 1933.  The local stationmaster, Herr Hudetz, rigorously runs this station like clockwork.  A terrible accident occurs leading to the death of eighteen people.  The play quickly gets to this event.  What follows is an expose on mob mentality.  The timeliness of this revival is evident.

The townspeople are nasty gossips.  Rumors get started and become facts.  The flirtatious innkeeper’s daughter Anna tells Hudetz, “They say you’re not a man.”  He asks, “Who says that?”  She replies, “The whole town.”  Hudetz lives on the upper floor of the station with his wife.  She is thirteen years older and appears to be a jealous, barking shrew.

Frau Liemgruber is waiting for a train which is 45 minutes late.  She has a conversation with a salesman.  “I hate people,” she says.  He understands.  “For all I care,” she adds, “the whole town could drop dead.”  The mood of this play is bitter and angry.  As a result, the dialogue is dark and the people are largely unlikable.  They cast aspersions.  They pass judgments.

After the tragedy, the stationmaster admits that he doesn’t want to live anymore.  “I still hear the screams.”  Anna offers a suggestion.  “Maybe you have to do something worse so that you will be punished.”  Citizens of this town are fickle.  They defend, support and love one minute and cruelly discard and condemn the next.  Like many of the mobs in America today, all of this judgment occurs without facts.  Even when things are briefly going well, the barmaid has some sage advice.  “Don’t be too noble or people will turn on you again.”

The play itself is excellent.  Mr. von Horváth created a fascinating tale of guilt and a harsh criticism of his contemporaries.  This production is housed in the cavernous Park Avenue Armory.  Paul Steinberg’s sets are nothing short of gigantic, fashioned out of plywood.  They are moved around the room with giant lifts.  Scene changes are cumbersome and sap all energy from the room.  Occasionally, cast members run around the movement to enact mob mentality, to distract attention or to kill time depending on your judgment.

The lighting design by Mimi Jordan Sherin is sensational, however.  Trains whiz by.  The night sky ominously frames the giant trees.  Shadows portend danger.  Unfortunately, the direction by Richard Jones (The Hairy Ape) is very uneven.  This little play is lost amidst the need to fill the voluminous space.

What’s even worse is the lack of consistency in the actor’s presentations.  The barmaid (Jeena Yi) is oddly contemporary.  Luke Kirby (Emmy Winner for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) plays the stationmaster in a rigidly precise way.  I enjoyed the performance immensely but the style contrasted so obviously with everyone else, especially his freewheeling wife Frau Hudetz (a fine Alyssa Bresnahan).  Her unpopular brother Alfons is played by Henry Stram and his discomfort and acquiescence registers beautifully.

Harriet Harris (Thoroughly Modern Millie) nailed the tone perfectly as Frau Liemgruber, the town’s busiest of busybodies.  Her scathing tongue is utterly detestable.  Perfecting the group think mentality and using gossip to entertain herself and destroy others is her pastime.  I did not feel the same way about Anna, the flirty girl at the center of the story.  Susannah Perkins conveyed pretty and desirable.  She did not, however, convincingly project a woman that is manipulative enough to justify her actions.

Judgment Day is a very fine play.  With a critical eye, Ödön von Horváth sheds a bold spotlight on the culpability of a village.  Maybe in another one hundred years the world will understand how the culpability of a now morally bankrupt Republican Party will be judged.  As I write this, the House of Representatives is voting on impeachment.  Let’s watch the mobs and remain bemused.

www.armoryonpark.org

As an enormous fan of the work by Horton Foote, I was genuinely thrilled that Signature Theatre was going to revive The Young Man From Atlanta.  I missed that production when it had its world premiere in 1995.  Mr. Foote was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this play.  I find that praise hard to fathom after sitting through this stilted melodrama.

Will Kidder, Lily Dale Kidder and Pete Davenport are the major characters in this play.  They were included in the magnificent nine play opus called the The Orphan’s Home Cycle.  I saw a superb revival of the entire cycle at Signature Theatre in 2009.

The original story was about generations of a family inspired by Mr. Foote’s own father.  He decided to revisit these characters when he wrote The Young Man From Atlanta.  The settings are typical of his style combining quirky Texas families and their relationships with each other and the outside world.

Will Kidder (Aidan Quinn) is much older here and has suffered the loss of his only child who drowned at 37 years old.  He’s convinced the death was suicide.  He discusses this with a co-worker as he cannot talk to his wife.  Clunky set-ups like this one at the start of this play mar the usual believable and naturalistic atmosphere so prevalent in other pieces.

Wife Lily is sure the drowning was an accident.  Her grief has stopped her from playing the piano.  She reminded me of my grandmother who never drove a car after her teenage son died.  That pain is recognizable.  Kristen Nielsen, an admirable and often excellent comic actress, is necessarily restrained in her performance.  She is not necessarily the right choice for this part, however.

The title character is a man who lived with their son in Atlanta.  He showed up at the funeral and was obviously grieving.  Lily is still communicating with him and has sent him money.  When the patriarch loses his job, the solid ground of the white American male collapses.  Mr. Foote’s men see work ethic as their primary driver in life.  An absolute right to success that they are owed given their efforts.  With the debt of a brand new home, money is suddenly tight for the first time ever.  Financial stress mounts and it is not hard to predict what will happen.

The Kidder’s have a black maid named Clara (Harriet D. Foy).  Lily is obsessed with “The Disappointment Club.”  This is one in which black women supposedly fail to show up for work at white women’s homes to get back at them.  Lily’s heard that Eleanor Roosevelt was behind this and quizzes both black characters about their knowledge of such club.  Texas in the 1950’s feels segregated as in the book and film, The Help.

Throughout the performance I caught, lines were flubbed repeatedly.  Some people come across as underdeveloped caricatures.  Others such as Lily’s stepfather (Stephen Payne) just blandly appear and seem to add little to the proceedings.  Michael Wilson directed this production as he did with the accomplished Orphan’s Home Cycle.  I cannot pinpoint why the tone seems so off-kilter and the pacing so labored.  A late scene between Will and Lily, thankfully, was richly emotional and perhaps hinted at the original’s success.

Pat Bowie portrays Etta Doris in the show’s best scene.  She is a retired elderly maid who worked for Lily many years ago.  Clara invited her to say hello.  There is a touching moment when the passage of time and the wisdom of age is considered.  Whose life is happier or more settled in retrospect?

Dan Bittner and John Orsini were equally memorable as the co-worker Tom Jackson and a familial relative named Carson.  We never meet the young man from Atlanta.  It is not too hard to guess why this grieving man is clinging to Lily’s sympathy.  Their creative son was always a bit different and hard to understand.  Set in 1950, one can understand the burying of secrets.  By 1995, however, this contrived soap opera is hardly unique storytelling or thematically revolutionary.

I highly recommend trying Horton Foote’s plays.  They are usually superb dissections of a time, a place and a people he knows intimately.  The Young Man From Atlanta is not one of them.  The cycle mentioned above as well as The Trip to Bountiful, Dividing the Estate and The Roads to Home are all ones I’ve seen and worth your time.  I will seek others out as they are revived.  He’s usually that good.