Category Archives: Fringe Theatre

Trenton is More than OK

It has been a long time since I have posted on this blog. It has lain fallow during the long months (now years) of Covid. With theatre in this country in even greater crisis than it has ever been in before, I wondered if there was a point to continuing on with this site, in this medium. Passage Theatre’s necessary and propulsive The OK Trenton Project inspired me to return.

In 2017, Black and Brown students of Camp Mercer sponsored by Home Front (as a matter of disclosure, my church frequently works with Home Front on charitable projects) under the mentorship of artist Eric Schultz, created a sculpture entitled “Helping Hands”, a work that was displayed at the intersection of Montgomery and Perry Streets in Trenton, NJ. It’s time there, however, was short-lived after accusations that it was a gang sign forced its quick removal. Since it vanished before the plaque could even be installed, the work has become known as “Ok Trenton”.

Playwrights David Lee White, Richard Bradford (who is a member of the acting company as well) and the rest of the ensemble have crafted a piece of documentary theater that seeks to understand why exactly “Ok Trenton” was removed. This choice serves the proceedings exceedingly well. White, Bradford, and their collaborative team seek to find out the who, what, where, when of the event beyond the hyperbolic headlines. In that, the play stands as a superlative work of investigative journalism. Schultz, the teens who worked on the project, gang members (current and former), politicians, other artists, and community activists were interviewed, and the interviews with them are performed by the tight-knit ensemble of five. Further, in the best tradition of The Tectonic Theater Project, they also want to find out the how and even more importantly the why. What elevates the proceedings is that that why remains elusive to the very end. No compelling reason for the destruction of public art reveals itself because, at the end of the day, what compelling reason could there be?

Overseen by the director (and Passage’s artistic director) C. Ryan Domingues, the stage is a judgement free zone – which proves difficult for the audience to maintain when one particular character emerges toward the end. What we the audience witness is the symphony of Trenton in all of its beautiful messy complexity, its hopes, its history, its trials, and its tribulations. As much as Bradford is the protagonist as he, Columbo-style, doggedly seeks resolution, the hero of the play is Trenton itself.

A piece of documentary theater can prove to be a difficult construct as there is frequently a tension between the needs of the documentary part of the equation and the theater part of the equation. White and Bradford make a daring choice when the pivot on the question of “has something like this ever happened before?” And, the answer is yes: a mural of Michael Brown and then a painting of the Puerto Rican flag on the side of a house. What The OK Trenton Project conveys achingly, passionately is that the diverse communities of Trenton long to express themselves through art in the face of reflexive and thoughtless opposition. As the company interviews local politicians, they find the official articulation for removing the sculpture is inchoate at the best (and it is rare we even get there). The tragedy here is the tragedy of the nation: irrational anger, resentment, grievance, fear is all that is needed to shut down someone just trying to have voice. The teenage artists have a clearer vision of trying to create a positive force for good, then those who seek to shut them down. Theatre is at its best when it can take the local, specific, and individual and make it universal. That is certainly what White, Bradford, and the company have accomplished.

Domingues makes great use of The Mill Hill Playhouse to represent all of Trenton. The company is uniformly excellent. The cast takes on multiple roles. Briefly, each stands out in a specific turn: Kevin Berger as Schultz, Carmen Castillo as graffiti artist Leon Rainbow, Molly Casey Chapman as Councilwoman Marge Caldwell Wilson, Wendi Smith as drama teacher Felicia Brown, and, most of all, Bradford, playing himself.

As part of its curtain speech, Passage welcomes its audiences back to live theatre. Thank you Passage for allowing me to return to my blog.

Decky Does a Bronco Speaks to Our Moment of Pain

Douglas Maxwell’s Decky Does a Bronco first appeared in the playwright’s native Scotland in the year 2000. It is a not uncommon tale of a childhood loss of innocence, in this case taking place in a council estate outside of Glasgow. There are some parallels with the Stephen King short story “Stand by Me” and it Rob Reiner’s subsequent film adaptation. Works of art sometimes need to find their own time and place when they are most resonant and relevant. Decky Does a Bronco has found its in the United States of 2019 for its premiere in this country.

[Be warned that spoilers lie ahead. It is near impossible to review Decky without revealing some critical details about the play. Knowing them, however, will not substantially alter your viewing experience.]

Pre-teen Decky (Misha Osherovich, A Clockwork Orange at New Work Stage) dies horribly, pointlessly, and randomly. It remains for the four remaining remaining friends – O’Neil (Graham Baker), Barry (Kennedy Kanagawa, Lolita My Love at the York Theatre), Chrissy (David Gow, Waverly Gallery at Shakespeare & Co.), and narrator David (Cody Robinson) – to live with the consequences of that horrible end. In an interview with The Modernist Beat, Gow – who also produces for Starting Five Productions – explained that it has been usual for past productions for these four roles to be played by two actors: one juvenile and one adult. Here, adult actors take on both. it creates some interesting challenges in communicating the shifts to the audience, but director Ethan Nieuaber nimbly navigates his actors from one age to another – sometimes the shifts move quickly – and the results are more complicated and nuanced character portraits.

As narrator, Robinson has to carry the emotional burden of the piece. The construction of the story – of the play – of the life and loss of Decky evolves into David’s process for trying to grapple with the events of the past. He is a survivor, and he finds himself overwhelmed with survivor’s guilt. He searches for ways in which he was responsible. He suffers from PTSD, and it is through the process of sharing the story that he can find healing. Robinson dives into that pain twisted with guilt and conveys that that process of healing was a hard won thing and still tenuous at best. The other survivors are not so lucky, particularly Chrissy who disappears into himself psychologically.

And it is in David’s journey, in his authoring his pain, that should speak with a roar to the 2019 American audience….because we lose so many Deckys every day. From Sandy Hook to Parkland, from the recent shootings in El Paso to Odessa (which have seen babies and high schoolers shot and killed), the number of those who must survive and continue after the loss of a friend, family member, school mate grows exponentially. We are become a nation of shell-shocked survivors, particularly our children. How will we carry these terrible burdens into adulthood? In this dark times, it is a play like a Decky Does a Bronco that will offer a map to escape the worst of their nightmares. There are certain parallels between the play’s David and activist David Hogg.

Osherovich brims with life, energy, and joie de vivre, so of course, the dimming of that light only enhances the sense of loss. Indeed, much of Nieuaber’s strategy in the first half of the play is to keep the proceedings uproarious and brisk, so that our descent will be that much greater. Baker finds the swagger and bluster in perennially cool kid O’Neil. He also the first to intuit what has befallen Decky. Gow seamlessly moves between the two ages of Chrissy in a frenetic performance that turns dark and grim as the boy becomes the second victim of the central event of the play. Kanagawa is the production’s secret weapon. He always surprises from the sheer comic lunacy of rushing to his auntie’s for tea on a bicycle to a more dramatic turn when he realizes he is the oldest of the boys and must accept responsibility for his cousin David. As always, Starting Five Productions always does incredible design work for an off-off-Broadway company. A special shout-out to scenic designer Diggle for the construction of a complete swing set on stage.

As gun violence will seemingly continue without end, it is plays like Decky Does a Bronco that will guide us in the aftermath. Starting Five could not have found a better time to premiere the work here and speak to our dark national moment.

For the interview with Gow, please follow this link: http://www.themodernistbeat.com/2019/08/13/decky-does-a-bronco-premieres-in-the-usa-an-interview-with-producer-david-gow/

For more information about the show, please follow this link: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4302610

Interview with Peter Allas, Director of Danny and The Deep Blue Sea

The Modernist Beathad the opportunity to interview Peter Allas (perhaps most famously The Calzone Man from Seinfeld) who is directing John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and The Deep Blue Seaperforming this month at The Loft at the Davenport Theater. He is in New York from San Francisco, where he holds the post artistic director of the Firescape Theatre. His directorial resumeis a who’s who of the leading American playwrights of the past quarter century. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

MODERNIST BEAT: Hi, Peter. Before we dive in, I noticed that you have just directed a production of Guirgis’s The Motherfucker with the Hat. Just as an aside, I saw the production at the National in London a few years back. And I was standing on que for my tickets at the box office, and there was a man in front of me who was very much the cliché of the English toff. He wanted to find out about the play, but he didn’t want to say the title out-loud in public, so he ended up asking, “Could you tell me about The Disagreeable Gentleman with the Hat?”

PETER ALLAS: That was a fun show to direct because I grew up blocks from where it takes place in the late 70’s early 80’s and I was a DJ in may teens so I loved adding a whole soundtrack to really bring the audience in to that “Latin” world and NYC. Funny thing EVERYONE asked for my “SOUNDTRACK” because it was so memorable and colorful, but then again so is NYC!

MB: You’ve directed works by some of this country’s most important living playwrights. What would you say are the joys versus the challenges of directing a work by Shanley as opposed to Guirgis, Hwang, or Mamet?

PA: Every play I direct is a challenge! Because like Elia Kazan would say “shock yourself”, as an actor, and I do so as a director as well. If it’s “too easy” I don’t want to do it! The joy to me is the words and style. I love Shanley, David Mamet, Guirgis, Theresa Rebeck, Nilo Cruz,and William Mastrosimone of the modern day writers because of their Love of language and character rich dialogue/story. But I also love Clifford Oddets, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Harold Pinter and of course Chekhov, because they are great story tellers who have rich characters and a great sense of humor in the face of tragedy! I’m partial to Mamet because I was born and grew up South Side Chicago like he did. I became “the kid” to my mentors of the “Mamet Mafia” – Jack Wallace, J.J. Johnston, Mike Nussbaum, amd especially Joe Mantegna whom I later worked with as well – to name a few. The challenges are to make the street style dialects authentic, real, and flow while maintaining the integrity of the story itself. Too many actors and directors miss the boat with these writers because its colorful, funny, or edgy but the miss the humanity, or “music of the people” and soften it.

Which leads me into why I like directing as opposed to acting. My goal as a director is first, to awake the audience; most are sleeping and come to just to be entertained…..hmmm well, not in my theatre, and certainly not with these authors. Then I have to “wake them up’” and “enlighten them”, and finally get a visceral response to the art! I’d like them to leave having “real thoughts and feelings” about what they just saw and stir up conversations at the dinner table or at home two hours later. For instance, when I directed Neil LaButte’s Reasons To Be Pretty, I wanted the audience to be right in the thick of it and be emotionally invested in every scene so I had the actors break the fourth wall and speak there monologues three-to-five feet away from the audience. In the end, I used Robert Flack’s “The First Time Ever I saw Your Face” to emphasize and evoke deep regret yet change by the lead actor for not telling his girlfriend Steph…”You look pretty”….! Well, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house at curtain! Audiences were having real discussions about communication in a relationship and images of beauty that are damaging!…… Mission accomplished!!!!

MB: Your resume leans heavily toward Shanley. What is it about his voice that draws you to his work? Is there anything consistent in your preparation as you go into pre-production for a Shanley play?

PA: Shanley, or here in after I will say John, and I have had success because he speaks my language. Some directors and actors worked together because of that exact reason such as Dan Sullivan and Don Margulies, Gene Saks and Neil Simon, Tony Taccone and Tony Kushner and my mentor the late Milton Katselas and Edward Albee to name a few.

MB: One aspect of Shanley’s work that continues to fascinate me is the moral complexity, emotional ambiguity, and flawed humanity he instills into almost everything he write. I’m thinking of that powerful scene in Doubt between Sister Aloysius and Mrs. Muller. Danny and the Deep Blue Sea is certainly informed by a flawed humanity. What are your conversations like with your actors, what is the rehearsal process like, to pull the play toward that grey rather than a stark black-and-white duality?

PA: What I love about John is his strong emphasis on characters from the street, their need to be heard, to feel, to connect and do it with danger, pain, humor and poetry. The key is to be a specific as possible and true to the core (Bronx vs. Little Italy). John’s earlier works like Danny, Savage In Limbo, and Italian-American Reconciliationtend to repeat the same Catholic themes from the resurrection and guilt, to the seven deadly sins and redemption! As I re-read this play for the umpteenth time I fell in love with the richness of John’s heart, much like Moonstruckand Italian American. This is raw, unpolished, and lean, much like Mamet’s earlier work. As for Doubtand Defiance, I feel John changed his message to some degree, but he does have that “moral compass” issue you so eloquently put! These characters struggle with that and have a need for “forgiveness of their sins”!!!!

Nothing personal but I don’t reveal my process. I will say that, I was blessed work with great directors as an actor from Milton Katselas, Joy Zinoman, Sharon Ott, on the television/film side, Patrick McGoohan, Leo Penn, Sydnie Fury and Martin Campbell just to name a few. And my early studies at Boston University and Fordham with David Wheeler, B. Rodney Marriott (later at Circle Rep).

MB: I see that you are the co-creator and artistic director of the Firescape Theatre in San Francisco. Tell me about that.

PA: Firescape Theatre Co in San Francisco came out of a dream I had to run my own rep company from the old “Circle Rep Co”. days as a young actor/director. I watched Gary Sinise and John Malkovich as “young unknowns from Chicago” knock me out with True West. Funny thing, who knew seven years later I would act with Sam Shepard in Defenseless. Last year we had sellouts for ten weeks and one of our biggest hits, with the US premiere of Brilliant Liesby David Williamson (Australia’s most successful playwright) about sexual harassment at an insurance firm, and of course, right after we closed the Weinstein thing exploded! Sadly, we should have gone to New York instead of LA, and it closed quickly. Perhaps next one.

MB: Are they any intriguing differences between directing in San Francisco versus New York?

PA: San Francisco is a funny market. It seems like a little New York, prides itself more cultural than LA, & Chicago, and has the 5th largest theatre Market in North America, but I feel, the bar needs to be raised. Having been to over 65 plays in three year (if not more) I find the lack of quality, commitment to professionalism, and attitude a bit “in the dilettante” phase. Perhaps it the weather, the beauty of the lifestyle, or simply put, the “New York hustle and drive and strive to be the best” just doesn’t filter down. I will say there has been some stellar work at Berkeley Rep and Amy Potozkin (the CD there) really knows truthful acting, and a handful of other theatre like Palo Alto Players (where I am directing the Bay Area Premiere of All the Waynext in November). New York has a hunger, a drive, an edge and most all, the best of the best come here to be actors, not STARS!!! Although it’s good to be a star, too.

MB: Anything you would like to add?

PA: In closing I’d like to say “please come and support live theatre and this heartfelt, rich local writer”.

MB: Well, thank you for your time. Break a leg with the show. One last question: do you still refuse to take loose change? 😉

PA: I promise to say at the box office, “You can’t pay in change…….You’ve got to have bills, paper money! THEN YOU GOT NO CALZONE!!!!!!!!!”

Danny and The Deep Blue Seastars Hannah Beck and Jonathan Crimeni. It opens Wednesday September 12 and runs to Sunday, September 23. For more information, follow this link: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3562037

Revolutionary Art or Vandalism?

In the winter of 2010, graffiti artists used an outside wall of The Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago as a blank canvas upon which to create. This Is Modern Art by Idris Goodwin and Kevin Coval, which has taken a journey from Steppenwolf in Chicago (where it was commissioned) to the Kennedy Center, now has its New York premiere at New York Theatre Workshop’s Next Door. Blessed Unrest is producing.

The play investigates two intersecting concerns. The first asks whether the graffiti on the Modern Wing’s wall is an act of revolutionary art or vandalism. The second dramatizes the process by which a work of graffiti art is created. That is a lot weight to place on the slender shoulders of a play with an 85-minute running time. I am happy to report that play and production are more than up to the Herculean task.

The primary issue of the play is whether or not the graffiti on the Modern Wing (or, indeed, any building or structure we may see in an urban space) is art. The play boldly articulates that it is. Art critics such as Tony Bennett, deploying the lens of Michel Foucault, have argued in recent years that cultural spaces such as museums reinforce a stratified class hierarchy favoring the dominant. Though a museum claims to be open to all, how it presents its space often makes it an unwelcoming place to those outside of the neo-liberal hegemony. Culture is a barrier, not a leveler. What Goodwin and Coval convey with a crystal clear clarity is how this particular act of graffiti was about reclaiming a space, about sharing a work of art with the people, all the people. It is truly revolutionary.

If the above sounds a bit too abstract, the second part of This Is Modern Art‘s mission provides the production with a strong propulsive narrative. The play digs deep into the history and practice of graffiti art. The characters know the history of their craft and are inspired by a broad spectrum of artists from Sane and Smith to Basquiat to Caravaggio. Works about artists almost exclusively focus on the inspiration and the perspiration, so the act of creation always comes across as a snap. Not so here. Goodwin and Coval take time well spent to dramatize the collaborative process of developing a tag or piece, gathering the necessary materials, planning the logistics of how and when they are going to bomb, and executing all of the above. It is a harrowing process. One of the great elements of the film Love and Mercy is on the very long and difficult process it took Brian Wilson and The Wrecking Crew to build the Pet Sounds album. The play taps into the struggle of artistic creation and ably translates that to the medium of graffiti art.

As the three artists, Shakur Tolliver (Seven), Andrew Gonzalez (J.C.), and Landon G. Woodson (Dose) are a tight and nuanced ensemble. Each of their scenes – whether they are breaking the fourth wall or engaged in a moment of naturalism – crackles with the energy of creation, passion, rawness, anger, respect for their craft and one another, and the love of beauty. The story tends to put the spotlight on Seven, we are always aware of how essential J.C. and Dose are to the collaboration. I particularly like J.C.’s mystical engagement with his Muse. They have an absolute commitment to the material. Nancy MacArthur plays Selena, Seven’s girlfriend and lookout for the group. I was unsure of why the role was there at first as she just seemed to be a Girl Friday along quite literally for the ride, but as the play progressed, it became clear the reason for her presence as Seven’s fears began to surface more and more. The most surprising moment of the play belongs to her near the end of the evening, and it is stunning.

This Is Modern Art fully engages in how space in this country is racialized. The art that Seven, J.C., and Dose create is available to all, even the homeless, while the art in The Modern Wing is available to those who can afford it. Seven feels excluded from the society of the art world by his race, economic status, and educational achievement; his exclusion is a tragedy because as play and performance demonstrate over and over again, he is both has a compelling artistic vision and a strong work ethic. As we are increasingly confronted by exclusionary spaces from public parks to Yale common rooms to Starbucks, the play offers an urgent contribution to the conversation.

The Next Door space is a small one, and there is not much room to maneuver. So there needs to be a special mention made of the collaboration between director Jessica Burr and scenic artist KEO XMEN. They recreate the original graffiti in a way that is striking, theatrically exciting, and surprisingly cost effective.

More information about the play can be found by following this link: https://www.nytw.org/show/this-is-modern-art/

Chekhov on Crack

Back in 1976 as part of his longer work Dogg’s Hamlet, Tom Stoppard wrote the “15-MInute Hamlet”, which includes the best known scenes of Hamlet performed at a quick clip. The cast then does it all over again, this time at the breakneck speed of two minutes. The most famous of tragedies is reduced to ridiculous farce. That is rather like the experience of Laura Wickens’s adaptation and consolidation of Anton Chekhov’s Platonov (an early and unfinished work that apparently clocks in at 5 hours) currently being presented by Blessed Unrest at the New Ohio Theatre.

I do not know the original work, but it seems to intersect with many of the plot points, characters, and themes from Chekhov’s better-known Cherry Orchard and shares some of the fervor of Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night. Director Jessica Burr has updated the design elements. If there is modern dress Shakespeare, why not modern dress Chekhov?

As a performance, there is much skill in evidence. A cast of six must serve as the population of an entire Russia villa. Since the roles they play often require them jump between genders, ages, and classes, they must demonstrate an adroit dexterity because there are times when one of their characters must then introduce the other one of the characters. The cast is energetic and game. Taylor Valentine, who plays the melancholic doctor and an aging housekeeper, appears to have a skeleton made more out of rubber than of bone as he bounces between roles, costumes, moods, and the occasional interspersion of modern dance.

This energy is quite entertaining in moments, but it does not add up too much. What we are given is the CliffNotes version of the play, moving with all haste from Chekhovian trope to Chekhovian trope. But none of it lands emotionally as we have no time to linger. Platonov (Darrell Stokes playing the role as reptilian yuppie) is the object of infatuation by several of the female characters, but we are never given a sense of the why because we are rushing far too fast from point a to point b to point c… and so on. And as the play moves to its darker conclusion fueled by the realization that Platonov is morally despicable, well, that too does not register. The audience never had the chance to experience Platonov’s allure so it cannot feel disappointment when he finally falls. Similarly, it is hard to feel for Anna (Irina Abraham) when her estate is auctioned to the outlaw Osip (Becca Schneider); it would have been wonderful to have gotten to know Osip more because he is quite the unique character in the Chekhov canon. In Stoppard this was fine because his exercise was tied to a larger work and because it intentionally satirizes a play that is achingly familiar. Platonov is not widely known, so what we are left with is Chekhov the Ride.

There is something in Platonov that speaks to the current moment of the #metoo movement – his manipulation and disposal of both his student Mariya (a sympathetic Javon Q. Minter) and his wife (Ashley N. Hildreth, long-suffering) – and could have been the focus of the adaption. I wish the adaptation had not been so literal – i.e. trying to cram everything into 90 minutes – but rather if it had pushed for a more nuanced innovation of its own, one that perhaps just carved out the relationship between Platonov, his student, and his wife. In that way, it could have been more true to Chekhov’s spirit (deeper exploration of the conflicts within characters) and spoken with greater authority to the world of its audience. As it is, though, it is just a bunch of stuff happening.

Cocktails and Conversation

A Life Behind Bars is a revelatory solo performance by its author, Dan Ruth. Starting in the 1990’s, Ruth takes his audience on a journey through a life, like that of so many artists in New York City, that is a hyphenate: performer-bartender. His narrative also witnesses his evolution from alcoholic to recovering alcoholic, which is a fascinating position to be in as a bartender. But then again, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people.”

I have known Ruth for years as a director (he directed my one-act “Howard Hopped The A-Train”), but not so much as a performer. When I first read the description of the piece, I thought it would be done more in the style of a confessional with an emphasis placed upon stark and bare prose. What Ruth delivers though is more in keeping with Anna Deavere Smith’s work; Ruth portrays individuals he has encountered across the years. His vignettes, sharply written and meticulously inhabited, form a series of interconnected short stories that lead to the inexorable conclusion.

The writing is remarkably grounded. Ruth chooses encounters that occurred at major historical events (election nights, 9/11) that help place those encounters in time. He establishes a clear internal geography of his spaces (apartment, bars) and external (how hip/not hip a particularly location is at any given time). With that foundation secure, Ruth is then free to weave his tales that often detail the frustrations and disappointments of a person of talent trying to break through whether professionally or personally. But this is no woe-is-me story. This is catharsis. The writer/actor infuses all of his considerable gifts in constructing this staged memoir. Don’t be sorry for me, he seems to say, but instead see what it is I can do and celebrate with me in that. From moments of simple declaration to a fast and furious raw poetry that moves with the syncopation of a stream-of-conscousness witnessing to wry observations of the pervasiveness of privilege, the writing is at once deeply personal while striking tones of the achingly familiar.

The strength of the writing would not be apparent if it were not coupled with Ruth’s strengths as a performer. He creates several memorable figures including an arrogant patron with a man bun and a Linda Rickman-like theater-goer who adores Andrew Lloyd Webber. His strongest work, though, is when he plays himself with a humble honesty. That Ruth makes it looks so effortless means he no doubt spent a considerable time perfecting each moment. In her direction Tanya Moberly clearly establishes that A Life Behind Bars is more than a collection of bits, that it has a coherent whole propelling performer and audience to a dark penultimate moment before at last arriving at its more hopeful coda. I did want Ruth to explore this last portion of the story more, but given the physical exertion already required, that may be a bridge too far.

Ruth performs A Life Behind Bars in New York City (at the Laurie Beechman Theatre) and, more recently, in Los Angeles at varying intervals. He has a battery of new dates coming up in the Spring 2018. For more, fall him on his Facebook events page: https://www.facebook.com/events/762483717250293/

So Holden Caulfield Made It To Adulthood. Now What?

Because of the complications of copyright, we may never see a living embodiment of Holden Caulfield on either stage or screen. Terrence McNally, however, offered us the next best thing with Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?, a work that premiered in 1971 at the Yale Rep. It combines autobiographical elements with a not-so-subtextual musing of what Holden Caulfield would have been like if he had made it to adulthood and the 1960’s. Indeed, the narrative movement conforms much to the original novel’s: a journey to New York City (this time on a plane instead of a train), a disastrous dalliance in a hotel, an ambivalent relationship with an older brother, a nervous breakdown in the rain. Now, though, the rebel without a cause suddenly has a cause.

There are some dated elements to McNally’s script (a starchy female customer at Bloomingdale’s for instance), but much of it remains surprisingly relevant in part because the playwright did not construct a realistic work. It is more of a meditation on the 1960’s counter-culture movement and its relationship to its roots in the 1950’s. In pushing his Holden-like character forward, McNally also does the same with other 1950’s icons such as James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. Tommy himself embodies both the positive and negative of that counter-culture movement (in 1971 the country found itself in a pretty dark place and elements of the peace movement turned to violence for political purpose). One can hear echoes of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when he reflects, “So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” The play and character walk the razor’s edge between the wave and the place where it broke, between Woodstock and Altamont.

It is in that ambiguity that the plays finds its resonance, particularly a year into the Trump Era. In a time when the old idealism is lost, when a sense of loss and abandonment is profound, and when desperation builds to an overwhelming force, it requires no great act of imagination what troubling path some might choose.

Of course, what is needed to convey this 1971 work in 2017 is a creative team that can navigate its extremely treacherous currents. Fortunately, Starting 5 Productions has done just that. Director Laura Braza and her design team have just done that. Scene designer Zach Serafin constructed one of the better sets I have seen on an off-off-Broadway budget that both tells the (expressionistic) story and conveys a certain beauty of the underground in its own right. Braza, further, keeps the the production moving at pace without sacrificing emotional depth.

The ensemble moves seamlessly from the ridiculous to the realistic. Emily Kitchens, playing numerous roles, does a hilarious job as an oblivious Pat Nixon. Portraying Ben Delight, Daniel O’Shea finds nuance in the role of the gentleman beggar. Emma Geer infuses Nedda Lemon with a melancholy that informs even her happier moments. When she admits to her deep unhappiness in her final scene with Tommy, we can just hear her heart break.

The lynchpin of all of this is Tommy, played by the exceptional David Gow. Gow does not so much embody the role as devour it. The danger of Holden or Tommy is that either could easily be reduced to a sociopath. The necessary approach, therefore, is to embrace the damaged child that is Tommy, that he has been damaged by the family, nation, world, and his own dreams. Gow pulls back from the bombast and hubris that often colored individuals from the counter-culture and instead fills his Tommy with vulnerability and despair. Even as he sits in the airplane drinking champagne looking across at America, an elegiac note sounds in his voice. When in the play’s coda, he loses everyone, we know, from Gow’s careful construction, that these are in fact losses that he cannot bare (despite his seeming bravado to the contrary). Yet, he finds puckish fun in the more surreal elements; he offers a vaudevillian physical battle with Mrs. Nixon as a blind handicapped girl at a photo op, a dead-on parody of James Dean, and a wonderfully demented performance as a Trotskyite Marilyn Monroe. This last left parody behind in the rear-view window and entered the realm of the sublime. Throughout, Gow finds the humanity that underscores all the character’s actions, and thus finds the tragic in the play’s final moments.

Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone? performs through December 17. More information can be found here: https://wherehastommyflowersgone.weebly.com

Just a Fun Show

Nothing particularly revelatory here. I had the opportunity to see The Play that Goes Wrong while I was in London. It’s a fun show. It’s a very fun show. I have nothing to add to what seems to be commonplace knowledge. If you want a show where you can turn off your brain and just laugh, this is the one. I would argue that it is better than Noises Off, which peaks in the second act with a third act that just doesn’t quite deliver the same oomph. I’m just happy that a show that started as fringe theatre has had so much success on both sides of the Atlantic. And kudos too to Seán Carey, who understudied for Leonard Cook the night I saw it. I didn’t notice until later that he was not a regular performer.

A Psychologically Complex Lear

In The Empty Space, Peter Brook argued that one of the reasons contemporary productions of William Shakespeare’s plays were so deadly (as in boring) was because actors were so familiar with the material that they played the end of the play from the start. He used as an example Goneril and Regan’s professions of love for their father in the opening scene of King Lear. Professional actresses would transfer their characters’ final descent into villainy to their introductory appearance thus robbing themselves and the audience of any sense of journey. I am pleased to report that the production of King Lear currently performing at The Secret Theatre in Long Island City has taken Brook’s injunction seriously and have escaped the pitfalls that have plagued so many other productions of the tragedy.

Director Alberto Bonilla and his ensemble focus on developing strong, complex, and believable characters. Bonilla moves the setting forward to a facility for ailing seniors. Lear (Austin Pendleton) suffers from Alzheimer’s, dementia, or potentially both, and the narrative of Lear plays out as a product of that illness. Pendleton has had a long, storied, and artistically rich career on both stage and screen, and he does not conform to the traditional image of Lear. Those who have assayed the role in the past – such as James Earl Jones or Laurence Olivier – can easily access bombast in their construction of the role. Pendleton takes a counter-intuitive turn. His style of acting is quiet and modest. He underplays where most others would over-play. He strays from received ideas about what Shakespearean performance should be and instead utilizes an acting approach more in keeping with an American sense of psychological realism. It is Lear by way of Willy Loman or Joe Keller. It is bound to be a controversial choice, but I think it pays dividend, especially in light of Brook’s argument.

What we therefore have is something I have never seen in a production of the play before: a full and intimate picture of the Lear family. British playwright Howard Barker wondered what became of Mrs. Lear and wrote his own Seven Lears to find out; he would have less to wonder about if he were to see this production. Pendleton, along with Elizabeth A. Davis (Once) as Goneril and Melissa Macleod as Regan, have brought the whole dark and dysfunctional history of this family onto the stage. This Lear does not bellow, but he laughs, he smirks, he cajoles, and we feel every smile as a lash on the backs of his two elder daughters. If they were not abused, they were certainly dominated and emotionally manipulated by a capricious and over-bearing patriarch. Even when they band together with the full power of the state behind them to deny him his entire retinue, they are still afraid of him. When Lear proclaims “I am more sinned against than sinning”, it is almost laughable here. In the hands of Davis and Macleod, Goneril and Regan’s choices are understandable and full of the contradictory greys that mark human choice in harrowing circumstances. When Lear attacks Goneril and wishes her a barren existence, our sympathies are with the daughter (it helps that Davis is obviously pregnant). This is a family with a penchant a la Albee for tearing into one another. The difference is that Lear makes a course correction and in abandoning power moves toward redemption, while his children continue on in their quest for power. Pendleton, Davis, and Maclead have created a Lear that is not just tragedy of Lear but also of Goneril and Regan – we cannot fully hate them nor can we fully forgive him for his responsibility in the play’s inevitable descent into darkness – and that is refreshing indeed.

Mounting a production of Shakespeare, especially on a tight showcase rehearsal schedule, presents a director a series of choices. Emphasize x, and you have to take the spotlight off of y. In focusing on Lear and his family, in fully grappling with their psychology and complexity, means less attention is given to the larger political reality of the play or world-building. King Lear has at its center a demonstrably irresponsible head-of-state who manipulates family and advisers (and the line between both is blurred) and sends his nation careening into chaos not because of threats from abroad but from self-inflicted wounds; it obviously speaks to our present moment. The larger geo-political implications of Lear’s choices got a little bit lost in the proceedings, and the design choice to confine the drama within the domestic sphere further isolated the impact of the tragedy from larger societal ramifications. I saw Bonilla’s excellent Macbeth (also at the Secret) a few years back, and the focus there was the opposite of here. World-building was at the forefront, and so there was less revelatory in terms of character exploration. What I look for in a Shakespeare production is to be shown something new or surprising in a canon I am all too familiar with. Bonilla, Pendleton, Davis, and Macleod made me want to spend time with these characters, and they found something both unexpected and deeply satisfying in the construction.

Also of note are Alexander Stine, who somehow managed to take the sanctimony out of the Duke of Albany and find both the darkness and the light in the part; Arthur Lazalde and Zachary Clark, who dive into Kent and Edmund respectively with great gusto; and most especially Jack Herholdt, whose portrayal of The Fool is quite simply brilliant. I had seen Herholdt as Dionysus in his own reworking of The Bacchae, and he never fails to captivate whenever on stage.

King Lear runs through April 9^th. More information about the show can be found here: http://www.secrettheatre.com/KingLear.html