George W. Bush’s victory over Texas Governor Ann Richards was a tragedy of national dimensions. We know the Bush presidential disaster that stepping stone led to. But this production focuses on what Texas lost when Richards left office. Not only did she have better politics, but she was a superior human being. She made it on her own, without a “silver foot” in her mouth. And she cared about ordinary people, not the 1%.
Old time clowns are modern again. At least when they are as sophisticated and clever as Bill Irwin and David Shiner. There‘s a lot about “Old Hats” that seems pretty new. The techno projections, for example. Top-hatted Irwin and Shiner appear confused as they wander in a tunnel, smoke swirling around them. We see it on video. It‘s telling us that technology will be a theme of their very witty performance– sometimes technology gone wrong. Or misunderstood.
A hit Broadway musical in favor of intellectualism and rebellion, that‘s a welcome surprise in New York where this season‘s best new musicals about people who challenged the system – “Chaplin” and “Scandalous” (about Aimee Semple McPherson) — had short runs. Though of course, this production comes from London and it‘s a fantasy, not about real events. Well, not about overtly political events. But it‘s about stultifying intellectual repression. From the point of view of children! If you have kids, take them. And if you don‘t, go anyway. It’s a play for adults, too.
It‘s uncanny how Shakespeare could describe coup politics in modern-day Africa. Of course, what director Gregory Doran shows in this brilliant Royal Shakespeare Company production is that ambition, demagoguery, the manipulation of masses and betrayal of ones comrades haven‘t changed much since the era of Julius Caesar 2000 years ago or the treachery of kings and rivals closer to the Bard‘s time. Doran ingeniously sets the play in another continent prone to violent political upheavals.
It was the worst of times. Lillian Hellman aptly called it “Scoundrel Time.” It was the early 1950s. Joe Gilford‘s play dramatizes the attack on free thought and free speech orchestrated by ruthless politicians who built careers by destroying the lives of actors, writers, directors and their families. It‘s based on what happened to his parents, Jack and Madeleine Lee Gilford, victimized by the House Un-American Affairs Committee (HUAC).
Lanford Wilson‘s play is a sharp, funny, charming look at romance, with a bitter-sweet sauce. Its hero leaps over barriers of religion, age, and economic and social status. Just what New York theater-goers want. It‘s one of the best revivals of the season, directed by Michael Wilson with just right mix of humor and nostalgia.
To be brilliant at playing a human is one thing, but to pull off a tour de force portraying a speaking animal is quite another feat. Kathryn Hunter is an extraordinary actress, and her performance in Kafka‘s Monkey will be remembered as one of the best of this and many seasons.
Jesse Eisenberg‘s play about the importance of family to which a holocaust survivor clings takes life through the fine, transformative acting of Vanessa Redgrave. The story itself is a pas de deux, or better, a psychological duel between Maria (Redgrave), who was 4 years old when the holocaust in Poland took her parents and siblings, and David (Eisenberg), a not terribly successful New York writer who comes to visit his second cousin in a Polish town near the north coast. Director Kip Fagan makes us believe that the most unlikely events we see really happened.
A charmer and good fun, albeit dated, Anita Loos ˜ 1946 play tracks the lives of the denizens of a bar in Newark, NJ. It centers around the transformation of Addie Bemis (a very charming Mary Bacon), who starts out as a rather tight prudish young woman, and ends up singing on the bar. The magic ingredient, of course, is love.
I met Benazir Bhutto in 1987 when she was leading the Pakistan People‘s Party in a national parliamentary campaign. I traveled with her on a motorcade in Sailkot, in the Punjab, northern Pakistan, where she was mobbed by supporters. From the top of the reporters’ minivan in front of hers, I could see crowds along the way shouting, chanting, some holding photos of her, young men dancing to loud piped music in front of the crawling vehicles, flags waving. Women were watching from atop one and two-story buildings along the route. It took hours instead of 20 minutes to get to a stadium where she addressed a mass rally.
David Ives is a master of subtle intellectual comedy. We saw that most recently in “Venus in Fur,” a feminist reimagining/twisting of the Sacher-Masoch classic, and a few years back in “Is He Dead?,” adapted from a Mark Twain story about an artist who fakes death to elevate the price of his paintings. But earlier, he had written a series of one-acts that were presented twenty years ago and that we are lucky to see again. John Rando‘s direction is spot-on, letting no grass grow between the laughs. The actors are an ensemble and connect as if they were used to finishing each other’s sentences.
It‘s rural Ireland in 1936. The house is comfortably lower middle class, with a lace-covered table and a fireplace mantle topped with old photos. It‘s a picture of the times. And so are the personal relations. This feminist work by Teresa Deevy, an Irish playwright who wrote in the 1930s, is about a spunky young woman whose only way out was to marry an older man. Director Jonathan Bank stages it as if it were an old movie, with no modern lens.
A.R. Gurney wrote this play in 1991, when the issue of AIDS was a hot button. The story takes off when Sam (Peter Rini), a State Department undersecretary of state for political affairs, returns to his prep-school to give a commencement address. Now in his early 40s, he had been the “old boy” of a younger student named Perry, charged with showing the new boy the rounds.
This is a children‘s story that cuts to the quick and speaks to the heart, that fascinates and shocks with its creativity and is definitely for adults. Besides that, it‘s a musical, with country and blues sounds and songs about woe, jazz and modern dancing, punning wit and horrific metaphors. There‘s even a classical painting that comes alive.
Interesting how misogynistic this 1955 melodrama feels in 2013. In Tennessee Williams‘ view, the men are victims and the women are perpetrators. That fits into Williams‘ theme about Brick (Benjamin Walker), the former school football star, being a victim of homophobia. Except, in a curious turnaround, the wound is self-inflicted when his wife Maggie (Scarlett Johansson), forces Brick and his college buddy to confront their relationship or maybe just their unspoken desires.
I loved this hokey, funny, vaudeville-style parody of a British mystery melodrama. My mouth stretched into a wide grin at the lampooning of British imperialism. My feet tapped at the high-stepping, high-kicking choreography. A combination of operetta and English music hall, “Drood” gives clichés a bad name and this production – book, music and lyrics by Rupert Holmes – a very good one.
Sharr White‘s play is a wrenching psychological mystery where the audience is kept in the dark until slowly clues emerge. Joe Mantello directs coolly and subtly so you see everything through the eyes of the protagonist until you don‘t.
This may be the most original play of the season. It‘s a Chaplinesque melodrama in the style of a silent film, done in black and white, with titles and live piano music. There‘s even a sense of the flicker of the old silents.
Attending Barry Manilow‘s new show is a nostalgic visit to the 1960s and 70s. The overwhelming mood is sentimentality. But it‘s hard to criticize this when Manilow engages in such marvelous self-parody, viz a video of foaming waves crashing on boulders.
If this play were written today, you‘d expect it to end with a murder or at least some physical brutality. The confrontation between George (Tracy Letts) and Martha (Amy Morton) in Edward Albee‘s riveting, iconic play pursues another kind of violence. Each of those expertly drawn characters, forcefully directed by Pam MacKinnon, commits sizzling, psychological mayhem on the other. It‘s a shock to discover that this college professor and his wife have been married for 23 years and haven‘t yet done each other in.
With a minimalist set of a dozen sometimes up-ended pastel colored wood chairs as furniture and metal clothes trolleys to represent doors and windows, “The Suit,” presented at BAM by Peter Brook and his long-time collaborator Marie-Hélène Etienne, is a symbolic play, a fable of adultery. But it also speaks of the cruelty of apartheid South Africa that spills out onto personal relations, and the struggle of the victims to find some joy, some way to survive the pain.
Known for delectable parody, this version of “Forbidden Broadway” starts out as a parody of itself. The talented cast of four belts out, “Forbidden Broadway is alive and kicking. Like Jesus and Judy Garland, we‘re resurrected again.” Signs declare “Bring back Mandy and Ricky Martin!”
This production of the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber biopic of Eva Perón is “Evita” lite, stripped of politics. Director Michael Grandage doesn‘t convey the corruption and brutality of the government of Argentina during Juan Perón‘s three terms in the 1940s, 50s and 70s. While Perón sought to improve the economic and social position of the working class, he also stepped hard on the opposition.
Clifford Odets‘ stylized naturalism combined with sometimes faux poetics often edges close to melodrama in his 1937 play about the conflict between art and money. The dialogue doesn‘t wear well with time and might seem almost ridiculous on stage today. But director Bartlett Sher makes it all believable with a strong and respectful staging. This production is still a powerful moment in theater and one of the best plays by an historically significant American playwright. And the politics of the play still matters.
Christopher Durang, always clever and inventive, has taken four characters from different Chekhov plays and transported them to the countryside of Bucks County, PA. Durang‘s comic remix of Chekhov is amusing and gets laughs, even if it doesn‘t always quite hit the mark.
Vanya and Sonia (“Uncle Vanya”), are brother and (adopted) sister who commiserate about their empty lives. They get a visit from their sister, self-centered actress Masha (“Three Sisters”) and her crude boy-toy Spike who could be Trigorin (“The Seagull”), but that would be a stretch. They meet the ingénue Nina (“The Seagull”) who arouses Masha‘s jealousy. There is also a Cassandra (“The Oresteia”) to stir the cauldron with prophecies. Nicholas Martin directs with an in-your-face this-is-a-joke spirit.
