Tag: Play

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

K-pop refers to South Korean popular music notable for its wide range of musical and visual elements.  Songs typically can touch on one or a mixture of pop, R&B, hip hop, rock and electronic musical genres incorporated from the West.  K-pop is a fusion of synthesized music, sharp dance routines and fashionable, colorful outfits.  This is big business entertainment, with young trainees living in regulated environments spending many hours a day learning music, dance, foreign languages and other skills.  Popular?  Psy’s “Gangnam Style” was the first music video to reach over one billion views on You Tube.  A viewing today shows 2.95 billion views.

KPOP is the latest full production at Ars Nova, the theater company committed to developing and producing works by artists in the early stages of their careers.  Perfect example:  before Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Thomas Kail’s Freestyle Love Supreme.  KPOP is performed at the new A.R.T/New York theater space which can house this larger scale, multi-floor piece.  The results are decidedly mixed.

Upon entering a black box space, we meet the owners of JTM, the company that develops talent and wants to make K-pop popular in America.  From that point, the audience splits up and travels through an immersive theater experience, exploring the “factory” where training occurs.  While some of the segments were brief, all of them seemed a bit of a slog, as was the entire evening.  (I’m ignoring the technical delays since this was a preview performance.)  The book was written by Jason Kim, who co-conceived this piece with Woodshed Collective, an immersive theater company.  The story touches on racism, age, appearance and nationalism as we consider, for one, whether the artists may be selling out to reach the American market.  A lot of themes here, both rushed and underdeveloped, in combination with scenes which felt overlong and slow.  The tone varied uncomfortably between satire and documentary, with awkward moments of audience participation.

By far the best segment is the one with MwE backstage.  She’s the current top star who unfortunately is now 26 years old.  The big finale was fun and I loved the song “KPopsicle.”  KPOP is not the best immersive theater experience in New York but it is an ambitious attempt.

www.arsnovanyc.com

www.youtube.com/gangnamstyle

Are you eagerly anticipating next season’s soon-to-be impossible ticket, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two?  (Registration for tickets starts October 1st.)  Have you read all the books and seen all the movies?  Is Moaning Myrtle your favorite ghost of all time?  Does the idea of sticking a Land O’Lakes label on a brown beer bottle make you laugh?  If you answered yes to some of these questions, perhaps Puffs is the diversion you need.

I have read all the books and loved the series.  My favorite was The Prisoner of Azkaban.  I’ve seen some of the movies.  The Pensieve, a magical memory bowl, was a remarkable plot device.  So I have enough knowledge to comment on Puffs, Or:  Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic.  This play is a take on the series from the point of view of the House of Hufflepuff, the most underrated of the four houses in Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  If you care not, stop reading now.  This show is not for you.

If you are fully aware that the Puffs were perennial losers in competitions and you’d like to see them try again to be great wizards, then this madcap sendup of the series is a silly, funny, entertaining comedy.  The audience roared when a joke was made about the book, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  Only after looking it up afterward did I learn that it was “written” by a Puff.  Yes, it will help to be a total Potter nerd to get every joke.  Those who did – and there were many – seemed to be beside themselves with joy.  For the rest of us, this was ninety minutes of well-directed fun with a high energy cast and some very impressive staging.  One more thing to consider before you go.  The Puffs are a little over Harry Potter, his hero attitude and those two friends of his.  They did not heed the “he who will not be ridiculed” motto.

www.puffstheplay.com

www.harrypottertheplay.com