Lillian’s Hellman’s account of the greed that tears apart a family is as powerful and compelling today as in 1939 when it opened on Broadway. It takes place at the turn of the last century, but was written at the end of the Depression. It’s about the advance and avarice of predatory capitalism. The little foxes, yapping and biting at each other’s heels, can be found on Wall Street and in corporate America.
Edward Albee is like a painter with a single overpowering theme. For him, it is the searing experience of being an adopted child of parents he hated. In Me Myself and I, a mother names her twin boys Otto (actually OTTO and otto), a way of divesting each of identity, and much later – when they are 28 – tells otto that he doesn’t exist. The play is bizarre, engaging, even amusing, especially when Mother, the blousy, intense, very talented Elizabeth Ashley is on stage.
Michael Frayn’s sprightly 1975 comical satire of newspaper life takes place in the library of a provincial paper. These were the days before computers, when librarians clipped the local papers and folded and filed the stories so reporters could get background on what they were writing. In spite of the title, Frayn’s newspaper library is anything but ordered, and filing by alphabet seems haphazard as well. But the ordered and disordered personalities that pass through among the piled high cabinets provide some comic pleasure as well as a gentle lesson about managing one’s life.
Sarah Ruhl’s inspired adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando is a poetic and vivid paeon to the art and importance of discovering oneself. It is also wildly clever and funny. Directed by Rebecca Taichman, it is yet another reason why the Classic Stage Company is so invaluable to New York theater. And why Ruhl is a playwright on the not-to-be-missed list.
