Leonard Link

"In the Next Room, or, the vibrator play" by Sarah Ruhl

I attended the matinee performance of "In the Next Room, or, the vibrator play" by Sarah Ruhl at the Lyceum Theatre in the Times Square area this afternoon.  Ruhl has taken the invention of the electric vibrator to new heights, imagining how it might be used by a doctor to treat "hysteria" in women and men with hilarious and moving results.  The premise is the sexual repression of women in the mid-to-late 19th century in the U.S., and how the introduction of the electric vibrator as a "therapeutic" advice may have led to women discovering unimagined sexual pleasure, thus revolutionizing domestic life.  Laura Benanti was delightful as the doctor's long-suffering wife, and Michael Cerveris most convincing as the doctor.  The supporting cast was all fine as well, and the set was marvelous.  Les Waters directed a splendid ensemble.  I can recommend this as a highly entertaining Broadway venture by the Lincoln Center Theater.  (I imagine it would have been equally, perhaps even more, amusing viewed in the round at one of the theaters at Lincoln Center....)   Definitely worth seeing.

City Center Encores Scores with Gershwins' "Girl Crazy"

City Centers Encores is a real favorite - a wonderful series spread over the concert/theater season reviving old musical shows with fully-costumed, semi-staged performances that always sparkle with energy and enthusiasm.  The new season of Encores began with "Girl Crazy," the musical show by George and Ira Gershwin that first opened in 1930, scored an immediate hit with such classic tunes as "Embraceable You" and "I've Got Rhythm," made a star of Ethel Merman, and ran for a then-wonderful 272 performances in the heart of the Depression. 

The music is everything with this show, because the plot is risible and mainly an excuse to string the songs together.  But the songs are really prime, and aside from the several songs that became "standard" you can't hear them without hearing a revival of the show, so thanks to Encores for reaching back a little farther than usual to animate this score for a few performances.

Rob Fisher, the original Encores music director who occasionally comes back for guest appearances, led the music with his usual panache, and Jerry Zaks devised a lively staging in the absence of sets.  The leading players all struck me as terrific in their roles.  The main love interest was portrayed by Chris Diamantopoulos and Becki Newton as Danny and Molly.   Ana Gasteyer flamed through the Merman role of Frisco Kate, belting out "I've Got Rhythm" with impressive gusto, especially in her long held high notes on the reprise.  Marc Kudisch was superb as Slick Follicle, Frisco Kate's philandering husband.  And the comic hit of the cast was Wayne Knight as Gieber Goldfarb, the New York cabbie who suddenly finds himself elected as mayor of a small Arizona town (in which mayors have a short life span).

This was a delight from start to finish, but I'm not sure whether it would be suitable for a transfer to a Broadway house.  The music is great but the book is rather flimsy.  There was a quasi-revival a while back under the name "Crazy for You," which goosed the book, added some songs from other Gershwin shows, and had some success, but it's nice to hear the original.  Nonesuch Records issued a CD of the complete musical score back in the earlier days of CD with John Mauceri conducting, as part of a project to record all the Gershwin musicals that I believe stalled out.  I'm not sure the CD is still in print, but recall the performance fondly.

The Understudy at Roundabout Theatre Company

"The Understudy," a comedy by Theresa Rebeck, opened on November 5 at Roundabout Theatre Company in Manhattan.  I went to a matinee performance today.  This is a three-character play: the stage manager, the star, and the understudy.  Julie White plays the stage manager, Mark-Paul Gosselaar plays the star, and Justin Kirk plays the understudy.  Actually, as it turns out, the star has second billing, and is also understudy for the first billed role.

Plays about the theater itself are a popular genre, as they satisfy the curiosity of theater-goers about what goes on behind the public face of theater.  In this case, there is some exploration of the tensions between the actors cast in the roles and those actors retained to learn the roles and then standby in case it is necessary for any particular performance to replace the cast actor.  Imagine the tensions between those who are headliners and thus who just sit and wait.  In this play, the focus is on a rehearsal that has been set up for a new understudy to rehearse his role with the cast actor. Their play is a recently-discovered three-hour marathon by Franz Kafka.  As is not infrequently the case on Broadway these days, the cast actor has achieved a certain amount of reknown working in film, while the understudy is strictly a stage actor, and resentful of the film and TV talent that comes slumming to perform in limited live theater runs.  To complicate matters, the stage director has a "history" with the understudy that threatens to derail the rehearsal. 

Justin Kirk has been a favorite of mine since "Old Wicked Songs" played at the Promenade Theatre, and I actually went to four performances, so smitten was I with the play and with Kirk's performance.  (It didn't hurt that the Promenade Theatre is in my upper West Side neighborhood, so it was no big deal to go back again and again.)  Then I loved his performances in the TV version of "Angels in America" and the film of "Love, Valour, Compassion."  I'm just a big old Kirk fan, I guess, so I had to see this and I'm glad I did.  He is marvelous in the part.

As someone who does not watch broadcast TV I was totally unaware of Mark-Paul Gosselaar, but I am unaware no longer.  He held his own with Kirk, the stage veteran, even though this was his NY stage debut, and did a marvelous job playing the egocentric but insecure movie actor working on a limited-run Broadway play.  Actually, the character turns out quite sympathetically....

And, finally, the real comic lead of the play is Julie White, the stage manager, who gets many of the best lines and definitely makes the most of them.  She probably has the most varied experience of the three, having done lots of live theater, TV and films.  I was smitten.

Actually, all three actors were superb, and Theresa Rebeck has provided a superb vehicle for them, ably directed by the always-reliable Scott Ellis.  Alexander Dodge's set is spectacularly good, and all the technical contributions are the high level one expects from Roundabout, among the best of NY's non-profit theater companies.  Definitely worth a visit.

Broke-ology at Lincoln Center Theater

I attended a matinee performance of Nathan Louis Jackson's play, "Broke-ology", at Lincoln Center Theater this afternoon.  I enjoyed this tremendously. 

The play tells the story of an African-American family in Kansas City, Kansas, with a brief foreshadowing scene set in 1982 and then the rest played out in current times, 2009.  A father and wife are excitedly expecting the birth of their first child in the first scene; thereafter, it is 27 years later, the father, now a widower suffering serious illness, and his two grown-up sons, the older a restaurant worker in the neighborhood, the younger an educated man with two college degrees, a summer job at the Environmental Protection Agency, and the prospects of returning to academia to teach at University of Connecticut and pursue an advanced career in environmental science with his faculty mentor.  The tension - father can no longer take care of himself, and older brother is putting pressure on younger brother to defer his educational/career dreams and remain in Kansas City at the EPA while helping to take care of their father, as older son's wife has just given birth to their first child. 

That's as far as I'll go on the plot, since to say more would be to spoil it for new audience members.  But I will say that the dialogue is terrific, and the four actors - Wendell Pierce as the father, Francois Battiste and Alano Miller as the sons, and Crystal A. Dickinson as the wife -- are all terrific under the capable direction of Thomas Kail, and I found Jackson's play to be continuously involving, well-paced, and nicely thought out.  In the nature of things a Lincoln Center Theater run is limited, but I hope there would be enough support for this play to transfer it to an off-Broadway house for a longer run.  It has the scale of off-Broadway, an intimacy of a family story that I think would have difficulties in a larger house, but it works nicely in the small-scale Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center.

"A Steady Rain" on Broadway - Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman

Responding to the siren call of celebrity, my theater-going companion and I jumped at the opportunity to buy advance tickets to see Daniel Craig ("James Bond" and others) and Hugh Jackman ("Wolverine" and others) live on Broadway in Keith Huff's "A Steady Rain."  At first I typed 'Keith Huff's play' but then backspaced and removed the 'play' because in my mind this really isn't...

That is to say, rather than a full-blown play with sets and costumes and many characters interacting, what we have here is a bar stage with two actors in modern dress sitting facing the audience.  Between them, they relate a fantastic story about the crash and burn of an egocentric and foul-mouthed Chicago cop.  I didn't find total coherence to the story, at least on "first listening," which is the only chance the author gets with most theater-goers, and even though some cheating was going on -- but I hesitate to specify because I don't want to load this brief notice with plot spoilers, especially since so many are likely to stumble on it they google the actors' names.

Craig and Jackman were both quite entertaing to watch and hear at Sunday's matinee, but a play of about 90 minutes that consists entirely of two men talking, occasionally getting up from their seats to wander about the stage, presents its difficulties.  I didn't find the story quite so gripping as to be willing to dispense much of waht constitutes live theater.  I certainly enjoyed seeing both Craig and Jackman "live and in person," as they say, but the play ultimately struck me as unconvincing, despite all the effort that went into conceiving it. 

The Retributionists - a new play in previews

This afternoon I saw a preview performance of a new play by Daniel Goldfarb, "The Retributionists," at Playwrights Horizons, an off-Broadway venue on West 42nd Street in Manhattan.  Leigh Silverman directed a cast of seven.  

Since this was a preview of a play that will open officially on September 14, I really should not say too much about the quality of the performance, which I expect will receive some tinkering from the director and cast between now and the opening.  And I shouldn't drop lots of plot spoilers, either, so I'll just give the general concept here. 

During World War II, a group of Jewish ghetto refugees are hiding out in the woods as partisans, raiding Nazi targets, when their leader has the inspiration to hold them together - a determination that when the war is over, they will bring about retribution against the German people.  This is depicted in a flashback scene at the beginning of the second act.  The play itself mainly concerns the attempted execution of the retribution scheme in 1946, in the context of strained and interrelated emotional attractions and repulsions of the four leading characters, who are played by Margarita Levieva, Adam Rothenberg, Cristin Milioti, and Adam Driver, in order of appearance.

I don't care for the use of the delayed flashback scene here.  I like my stories to be told in chronological order - I'm just old-fashioned that way.  The flashback scene does add something in terms of fleshing out the characters and their relationships, but almost all of it has been signaled during the first act, so in some sense it seems superfluous.  I also thought that the second act was too long, and jettisoning this flashback scene - while building in necessary elements of it elsewhere - would help to tighten things. Perhaps it could even be placed at the beginning of the first act, in chronological order.  That would make the balance of the first act much more comprehensible.  I also found my attention wandering during the bakery scene in the second act.

The four leads all undoubtedly have plenty of work to do on their characters between now and the opening, but I found in particular the character of Jascha, played by Adam Rothenberg, to be pretty well formed at this point.  Mr. Rothenberg has a striking physical presence.  I was interested to see that the other male lead, Adam Driver, was just in another off-Broadway show, which I saw at Rattlestick Theater several weeks ago, "Slipping," in which he was really marvelously effective, and I imagine by the time "The Retributionists" opens, he will have sharpened his role considerably.  This role is quite different from the one he played in the other show, and at first I didn't even recognize him as the character is so different.  The two female leads were, I thought, less far along than the male leads in figuring out and inhabiting their characters, but it is early days with three weeks to opening...

The plotting is a bit convoluted at times, in terms of emotional interrelationships, and some plot twists in the second act left me a bit puzzled at first.  Maybe playwright Goldfarb still has some revising to do as well.  The production seemed effective - sets, lighting, costumes - and the three supporting roles in the second act were well taken.

I think this is likely to shape up into something interesting, and I recommend seeing it a bit closer to opening, if not soon thereafter.  Certainly it is thought-provoking, and considerable dramatic tension is generated at key moments.

"Slipping" - A new play by Daniel Talbott

Forty years after Stonewall, and a story about the travails of a young man "coming out" in high school is still very timely, as we continue to read about the difficult time that adolescents have with their sexuality.  "Slipping" by Daniel Talbott is being presented in a short off-off-Broadway run at the Rattlestick Theater on Waverley Place in Greenwich Village.  The performance I saw tonight was officially a "preview," as the opening is August 4.  But the cast seems to have things well in hand.  With strong direction from Kirsten Kelly, the young cast of Seth Munrich (Eli), MacLeod Andrews (Jake), Adam Driver (Chris) and Meg Gibson (Jan - Eli's mom), takes us through the difficult life of Eli, father dead in a car accident, mother a bit of a freaky college English teacher, uprooted from his familiar teen life in San Francisco to relocate to Iowa where his mom has her new job.  Poor Eli can't find other gay kids to relate to but instead has crushes on closet cases - or perhaps straight men looking to be worshipped?  In any event, there is a dysfunctional relationship with a jock in S.F., and what looks like it might develop into a real relationship with another jock in Iowa.

The author is still learning his craft - some of the scenes strike me as too brief, the blackouts too quick - but much of the sentiment rings true, and the dialogue works most of the time.  The cast is really working hard to portray these characters convincingly, and they do so most of the time.  The result is a harrowing drama - especially for anybody who has endured the coming out process himself.  (This is about the experience of gay male teenagers; I'm not sure how much of it transfers to young lesbians.) 

The run is only a few weeks, so don't hesitate if you are interested.  It is not a comfortable play to watch.  There are some laughs here and there, but there is also much dramatic tension, and one will come away having considerably enhanced empathy for the continuing struggle these young men face.

"The Temperamentals" by Jon Marans - A New Play

I started off predisposed to like this because Jon Marans wrote one of my favorite plays of all time, "Old Wicked Songs," which I saw at the Promenade Theater in New York City at least four times during its run... 

And I did like it, because Marans has given a fitting dramatization to the early days of the gay rights movement in California, the 1950 formation of the Mattachine Society by Harry Hay and Rudi Gernreich and their early confederates.  This is a minimalist production - no sets, just a bunch of chairs pushed around a stage in a small theater set up in arena style - but it is a production that works in powerfully evoking that time almost sixty years ago when a handful of men decided it was time to start getting organized to win legal rights. 

Their early efforts never caught on in a big style - at its height, the pre-Stonewall gay rights movement remained tiny and mostly ineffectual, although some individuals and small subgroups did have a few significant achievements, such as persuading the American Law Institute to recommend decriminalization of private consensual sex as part of the Model Penal Code - but they did lay a foundation that was ready to be built upon by the Stonewall generation of the late 1960s and 1970s.

And they were an interesting group, with Hay himself and Gernreich (the mysterious anonymous member to most of the others) the most interesting.  Hay, with a communist past and a radical fairy future, was one of those impossible people who are necessary in any successful movement, and Thomas Jay Ryan plays him with that maniacal gleam in the eye that also comes across in the few film interviews I've seen of the man.  Michael Urie is spectacularly good as Rudi Gernreich, the talented fashion designer who risked all to be part of Mattachine but whose cover was maintained sufficiently for him to have a big career without ever being publicly gay.  Tom Beckett, Matthew Schneck and Sam Breslin Wright play supporting roles with gusto.  The entire thing is beautifully directed by Jonathan Silverstein, and produced with the technical support of the Barrow Group in their performance space at 316 W. 36 Street.

The production has been sufficiently successful that the run has been extended into August, so there is time to get tickets.  Anybody interested in an exciting dramatization of the roots of the modern gay rights movement should make an effort to see this.

The Norman Conquests - Broadway Production - a Mini-Marathon

Alan Ayckbourn's theatrical trilogy - made up of the plays Table Manners, Living Together, and Round and Round the Garden - first produced on Broadway about thirty or so years ago, has come back for a revival at Circle in the Square in a production imported, cast intact, from The Old Vic in London.   The three plays provide the story of Norman, one of those "most unforgettable character" types, and his relationships with his in-laws and their family circle.  (This is a mild way of putting it....) 

To advance the marketing of this production, the author insists that one can attend any one of the three plays and have a satisfying theatrical experience, or one can see them in sequence over a period of days, or once can take the marathon plunge, as I did with my usual theatrical companion, and see all three in order on a Saturday, when they run the first play beginning late in the morning, the second as a matinee, and the third at the normal evening curtain time.  That means entering the theater before 11:30 and exiting at 10:15.  Well, not quite, because there are substantial breaks between the plays for a late lunch and an early dinner in the neighborhood, and each play is a two-actor with an intermission, so one is hardly sitting that entire time.

I thought there were lots of things in the third play that would be relatively meaningless to the audience - that would seem curiously unmotivated - if they hadn't seen the prior plays, especially the first play.  One has to have developed an understanding of these characters and their back-history to really appreciate what is going on in the last play.  So I'll throw a little cold water on their marketing strategy and advise here not to see the last play unless you've seen one or both of the earlier ones.

But I'm not going to put any plot spoilers in here.  This sequence is full of surprises, and that's a main part of the fun of attending.  Seeing these characters develop over a longer span that one normally has in the theater.  I will say that there are many moments of great hilarity, the writing stuck me as very sharp and witty, and I didn't have much trouble with the English accents.

And herewith a shout-out to the cast - Amelia Bullmore, Jessica Hynes, Ben Miles, Paul Ritter, Amanda Root, and especially Stephen Mangan, whose portrayal of "Norman" is simply incredible.  The direction by Matthew Warchus superbly projects the action of the plott, and the sets and lighting struck me as excellently conceived.  Seeing this in surround adds a vital element of closeness to the action for the audience that is most welcome in this work.

Next Fall - An Excellent Off-Broadway Play

Next Fall, a production of the Naked Angels Theater Company, is running at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 416 W. 42 St., under the auspices of Playwright's Horizons.  This is a really excellent piece of theater, which I saw with a friend last night.  After seeing it, I checked on the NY Times review, by Ben Brantley, which ran on June 4, and I concur with him.

What struck me the most was how true the dialogue seemed - even when it got a bit didactic, it always felt like real people speaking, which is a great accomplishment for any author of plays to achieve.  The acting is superb, and plotting intense, and for once I was not bother by the extensive use of flashback to present the story.  It really was handled quite well by the author.

The play concerns, at its heart, a discordant gay couple in terms of their religious beliefs who manage to work through their differences in various ways over the space of five years, and their relationships with some other important people in their lives.  The Times review contains tons of plot spoilers, and I won't repeat all of that here.  I just want to salute everybody involved with this excellent production, and urge people to see it.  The author is Geoffrey Nauffts.  The actors are Patrick Breen, Maddie Corman, Sean Dugan, Patrick Heusinger, Connie Ray, and Cotter Smith.  The leads are played by Breen and Heusinger with great aplomb, but everybody is excellent.  The director, Sheryl Kaller, never places a foot wrong, and set design works beautifully using a small stage with limited resources to create several highly varied settings.  See it!