TheaterReviewsFromMySeat

A quote from the character of The Son:  “I pay for her life, my brothers and I.  All of it, for years.  And I want to stop paying for it.”  He is referring to his mother, widowed at the beginning of the play.  The Son is frankly not a big fan, to the say the least.  She left the family when he was a boy.  And now mother receives help from her children as she starts slipping into old age, incapable of realistically being independent anymore.  The Son takes on the role of Treasurer for his mother’s financial affairs. The usual topics are touched on including housing, money, health, forgetfulness and decline.

What separates this play from the usual, however, is how much this young author packs into 95 minutes.  We start with The Son (Peter Friedman, excellent) speaking directly to the audience in a confessional tone lamenting that he is going to hell.  We overhear phone conversations with the children (middle aged and older) debating their mother’s options.  We watch the mother and various interactions inside and outside the family.  We see ordinary lives complicated with family baggage while facing the inevitable passage of time.  We consider responsibilities and how they are examined.  There are so many quiet thoughtful moments that you cannot help but fill in the story from your own perspectives and personal histories.

The Treasurer felt a bit overstuffed to me and part of the ending seemed oddly fantastical and symbolically heavy handed.  That said, the play is interesting and complex.  The mother is played by Deanna Dunagan, the Tony Award winner from August: Osage County.  Ida is selfish and not likable.  The performance is so good that you both dislike and sympathize with her.  Marinda Anderson and Pun Bandhu take on a bunch of roles and are also terrific.  All of this is tenderly staged by the inventive David Cromer (Man From Nebraska, Tribes, The Band’s Visit, Adding Machine).  The Treasurer was written by Max Posner, a young playwright worth watching.  A worthwhile and uncomfortable memory play, especially recommended if this situation feels relevant to your life today.

www.playwrightshorizons.org

A highly regarded 1962 book by Anthony Burgess and an even more famous 1971 Stanley Kubrick film, A Clockwork Orange has been interpreted for the stage.  I have never seen the film which was a Best Picture nominee.  Ten years ago I listened to the audiobook with unforgettable narration by Tom Hollander.  The book is often noted on lists of best 100 books.  So I was looking forward to what disturbing piece of theater this production was going to offer given the source material.

Set in a near-future English society, A Clockwork Orange begins with episodes of extreme teenage violence.  The book is narrated by the protagonist, Alex, who gleefully describes his exploits with his “droogies” and then his experience with the state authorities who try to reform him.  In this conceptualized stage version, the plot is given a back seat to stylized movement, lighting, and imagery.  If you do not know the storyline, the play is likely to come across as murky.

This production originated in London and Jonno Davies reprises his role here as Alex deLarge, the alpha dog of the gang.  The marketing (and reviews) for this production focus significantly on the cast’s sculpted torsos.  Mr. Davies is not only ultra-fit, his performance is intense throughout with riveting physicality and movement.  If what surrounded him was on the same level, this might have been a dystopian companion piece to this season’s excellent 1984.  Instead, we are reminded that we are overdue to see the movie.

www.aclockworkorangeplay.com

I walked into Tiny Beautiful Things with a little knowledge.  I knew the play was adapted by and starred Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding).  I knew it was based on a book by Cheryl Strayed.  (Years ago I read her bestselling memoir Wild:  From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail.)  I knew it was directed by Thomas Kail (Hamilton).  And I knew that this play was sold out last year and this production was a return to a larger house; again a tough ticket.

The book Tiny Beautiful Things:  Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar is based on selections from an anonymous online column Ms. Strayed wrote before Wild was published and became an Oscar nominated film.  Essentially the play’s structure utilizes the advice column communications and Sugar’s responses which are often from a very personal, introspective place.  This piece is delicate, sad, funny, thought-provoking, sincere, honest, devastating, life-affirming and, yes, a tiny, beautiful thing.  I loved it.

Ms. Vardalos plays Sugar, a down-to-earth yet Oracle-type, working from home on her laptop.  She is superb.  The performance is restrained, dramatic and generous to her fellow performers, which can sometimes be hard to find in star driven vehicles.  Watch her listen and you’ll see what I mean.  Three actors (Teddy Cañez, Hubert Point-Du Jour and Natalie Woolams-Torres, all excellent) play the assorted letter writers seeking advice.

Filled with quotable lines and memorable monologues throughout, the result is a modulated torrent of grief, anger, confusion and neediness from subjects serious to mundane to silly.  Ms. Strayed’s very personal and intimate writing style shines through beautifully.  The simplicity and clarity of the staging and acting allow the emotional core to be the centerpiece.  A celebration of life’s imperfect journeys, Tiny Beautiful Things is not to be missed by anyone unafraid to shed a tear.  Or anyone with a beating heart.

www.publictheater.org

www.cherylstrayed.com

This year the Classic Stage Company is celebrating its 50th Anniversary.  As You Like It is the first of two Shakespearean productions this season.  Terrible is the word that came to my mind walking out of the theater.

The company’s Artistic Director is John Doyle who gave us brilliant revivals of Sweeney Todd and The Color Purple over the last decade.  He directed and designed this production, with original music by Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Pippin, Godspell).  Apparently one-third of the original text has been trimmed here.  I know Mr. Doyle tends to have a minimalist approach to his stagings.  What is left here, however, gives the impression of an under-rehearsed sketch with piano, violin and singing to further throw off any clarity on the play’s story arc.  The acting is all over the place and lacking in chemistry between the performers.  That is problematic for a play that ends in a quadruple wedding.

Much of the action takes place in the Forest of Arden, rendered here minimally with lights designed as acorns hanging from the ceiling.  There was nothing remotely magical or mysterious about the setting.  The space was too brightly lit reinforcing the rehearsal hall quality. The costumes were odd and did not place the characters into any definable period.  The rainbow umbrella to comment on the gender bending role reversal was symbolic overkill.

I did enjoy some moments from certain performers, particularly Quincy Tyler Bernstine (Celia), Hannah Cabell (Rosalind) and Kyle Scatliffe (Orlando).  Elllen Burstyn (Oscar winner for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, The Exorcist) played Jacques, the melancholy philosopher in the forest.  She delivers the “all the world’s a stage” speech.  Unfortunately, all I heard were words.  Perhaps if I knew this piece before seeing this production I would have been less bored and a tad less confused.  I would, however, probably still land on “terrible” as my summation of this As You Like It.

www.classicstage.org

Written and directed by Amir Nizar Zuabi, Oh My Sweet Land is being staged in kitchens throughout New York City.  The play was inspired by the stories Mr. Zuabi heard when he travelled to Syrian refugee camps in Amman, Jordan.  For this piece, Nadine Malouf performs this solo show while preparing kibbeh, a popular Middle Eastern dish of bulgur, onions, ground meat and spices.  While cooking, she tells us stories.  One is about Ashraf, her Brooklyn lover and a Syrian exile, who she pursues abroad when he returns home to rescue his family.  What will she find when she gets there?

Quite a few stories are told in this deceptively simple play.  Because the dialogue is so efficient and the setting so intimate, the experience is akin to inviting someone into your home not only to share their life but also to deliver news from around the world.  And since this is such a small space, there is no disappearing into the dark theater with a large audience.  This actress intensely meets your gaze.  This is serious stuff.

Ms. Malouf is exceptional here.  The structure of the play allows her to display many emotions and inner thoughts.  From eight feet away, I could see the tears well up in her eyes, full of liquid, sadness, concern, hope and despair.  Unlike the television, newspaper or internet, it’s not really possible to look/click away.  You are confronted with the thought of fellow human beings in distress.  She seems to be making the kibbeh almost as therapy.

We hosted two performances of Oh My Sweet Land for fifteen people each night.  The Play Company brings this all to life with chairs, lighting, sound effects which, from my seat, made our kitchen disappear.  In replacement, empathy.  For the Syrian people, for our immigrants and for humanity’s continual struggle to allow others the pursuit of happiness.  At a little more than an hour long, that’s quite a piece of theater.

www.playco.org

Winner of the 2006 Olivier Award for Best Play, On the Shore of the Wide World was written by Simon Stephens, a 2015 Tony winner for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.  The title of this play is taken from  the John Keats’ poem “When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be.”  Here is an excerpt:  Never have relish in the faery power / Of unreflecting love—then on the shore / Of the wide world I stand alone, and think / Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

That quote informs the mood of this play quite effectively.  The setting is Stockport and London in 2004 and centers around the Holmes clan, a working class British family.  This is domestic drama with tensions between brothers, parents and children, parents and their parents, and grandchildren and their grandparents, not to mention between the grandparents as well.  In a way, everyone stands alone and they go forth through life trying to figure it all out for themselves while attempting to see (or not see) other points of view.  It’s a quietly devastating play filled with a pile of interesting, flawed, rich characters.

I cannot imagine that this is an easy play to stage as there are so many scenes and locations, with some of very short duration.  Nicely directed by the Atlantic Theater’s Artistic Director Neil Pepe, we clearly follow the numerous story arcs.  There is tons of movement here:  from homes, city buses and taxis to abandoned hotels with lighting effects illuminating the way.  The staging mirrors the characters’ need for emotional movement as they each consider their lives and their choices, both in the past and towards the future.  All of this adds up to great stuff performed by a stellar cast of actors.  In a beautifully restrained way, the entire ensemble adds layers and layers of meaning and depth.

On the Shore of the Wide World has a lot to say… and not say.  “Of the wide world I stand alone, and think.”  Indeed.

www.atlantictheater.org