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Category Archives: Off-Broadway
Joan of Arc Not Inspired
I take no pleasure in writing this review. I admire the work and mission of the Public and have been attending productions there since the final years of Joe Papp’s tenure. This is a company that still takes risks, that pushes envelope, that supports its artists. And sometimes the risk pays off with dividends (see Hamilton). Even their failures, such as Party People, are often noble efforts. Alas, there is nothing noble about Joan of Arc Into the Fire.
I was glad to see David Byrne’s name on this season’s roster; Byrne wrote the music, lyrics, and book for Joan of Arc. The pre-set offers great promise. Hung across the stage is a banner with Mitch McConnell’s now infamous line about Elizabeth Warren, “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” Then the show begins, and that promise is abandoned. Over the course of roughly 90 minutes, the entire sweep of Joan’s meteoric rise and fall is chronicled. There is great dramatic potential here as both George Bernard Shaw and Jean Anouilh have discovered; indeed there is much for a musical to dive into. For instance, Joan (Jo Lampert) is known for her visions of the Archangel Michael and Saints Margaret and Catherine. The structure and language of musical theatre offers a great number of possibilities here of bringing those visions fully to life and providing each figure his or her own musical theme; of course, it could be an open question as to whether Joan was imbued or insane. But that rich vein, like so many others, was left untouched.
The show often feels like an endurance test. Musically, the first 45 minutes are repetitive. Most of the songs are exposition. The production seems to be unsure of what it wants to do. Does it want to follow Brecht’s strategy and utilize the historical figure for the purposes of contemporary political commentary? Which would be great. That makes a great deal of senses. But the creators never commit to that. Instead we get tired tropes of the freedom-loving French (really?) against the tyrannical English (again, really?). Other aspects of the Joan legend are rushed over. She took an arrow at the Battle of Orleans. This should have been a momentous moment, musically epic. Instead, it was meh. She also ferreted out the Dauphin in disguise when she first arrived at court. Another opportunity for a beautiful moment — a complicated duet between the two perhaps — was just left sitting there. Imagine what a Sondheim or Miranda could have done with that. One had the sense that the events of Joan’s life – whether history or legend – did not have narrative momentum or impact but were rather just a bunch of stuff that happened.
Alex Timbers offers uninspired direction with a combination of slow-motion fight choreography under a strobe light and the Les Miz turn-table (now with stairs!). And, out of nowhere, we get Mare Winningham as Joan’s mother in the last five minutes. We are told that she is important, but it all seems so extraneous at this point. During the trial, supertitles flash onto the wall telling us that what we are about to hear is actually from the transcript at the time. We should not be told these things. Done well, musicals have the ability to make us feel what is important, to know what is important without being told.
David Byrne’s work – whether as a member of the Talking Heads or in his solo career – is something I long admired and enjoyed, but his distinctive style and voice was very much MIA throughout the proceedings. Neither his albums or films (True Stories) are strong on narrative propulsion, but they do paint intriguing vignettes and character portraits. That strength, though, was not in evidence. No doubt a separate librettist should have been hired to provide structure.
The cast performs herculean labors to overcome the deficiencies in writing and directing. Lambert, Terence Archie (as Warwick), and Sean Allan Krill (Bishop Cauchon) all resonate on stage. If there is a weak link in the cast, it is Kyle Selig as a drip of a Dauphin.
Sadly, Joan of Arc Into the Fire is simply not worth your time. “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction,” Jefferson says in Hamilton. And so, apparently, for every Hamilton there must be a Joan of Arc.
Geoff Sobelle = Charlie Chaplin + Spalding Gray
I run hot and cold on performance art, but I found The Object Lesson — Geoff Sobelle’s art installation piece currently playing at New York Theatre Workshop — to be delightful, mostly. The end result is more a meditation on the place of things in our lives rather than a piece with a clear linear narrative arc.
Which is fine. Different can be good. The audience walks into NYTW’s space — which has had a distinctive look each of the last five times I have visited — and is confronted by what could be best described as Miss Havisham’s attic on steroids. With no clear center as to what the playing area might be, the audience is left to wander and roam a seemingly endless array of boxes, some of which prompt conversation with one’s fellow patrons. Chairs and couches are mixed in with yoga matts and stools. What is perhaps refreshing about Sobelle’s approach is that he does value some objects; this is not an all out attack on material culture. Some items become tokens of memory, of something significant from the past, of something shared.
Sobelle reminded me of two notable, if very different, past performers. On the one hand, when he broke into monologue, he reminded me very much of Spalding Gray. I cannot really say why this should be so. There was nothing Gray-esque necessarily about his focus, but nonetheless, the tone struck a chord that reminded me of that much-missed monologist. On the other hand, there was something clearly Chaplin-esque about the performance. Like his predecessor, Sobelle imbued the inanimate objects about him with life, personality, character. Like Chaplin, Sobelle was confounded and confused by anything representing a technological advance. And like Chaplin, his physicality was extraordinary. His training at École Jacques Lecoq in Paris was very much on display, and it served the performer and his construct well.
Highlights of the performance included two vignettes that make use of circular phone conversations, a monologue about a visit to the French countryside, and a a bit with ice skates and salad (which really has to be experienced rather than described). The ending, however, was something of a let down. The final vignette really did not provide a satisfying coda for all that had transpired up until that point. What was needed was perhaps not some sort of Aristotelian sense of narrative closure — because that is not what The Object Lesson is about — but rather some sort of emotional epiphany that would have made the end of the journey more pointed.
That point of criticism aside, The Object Lesson is very much a worthwhile evening of theatre. If anything, for those of who were there, it brings up fond memories of the kind of work that used to be a staple of the downtown theatre scene. Perhaps it’s time for a large-scale return to that kind of experimentation.
Sweat Opening Soon on Broadway
Lynn Nottage’s Sweat is beginning its previews in a few days. This is play is a must-see as it explains like no other artistic work Trump America. I think it is so important that I saw it for its off-Broadway run at the Public and purchased tickets for the Broadway run. I will post a more complete analysis after I see it again, but for now my advice is this: go see this play.
Shakespeare and the 2016 Election
Time to do a little catch-up work. The 2016 election was — to put it mildly — a clusterfuck of epic proportions. There were two Shakespeare productions that were playing in New York City at the end of the year, however, that really went quite far in encapsulating where we are as a global society.
The first was Red Bull Theater’s Coriolanus. The play is ready made for our current moment. The tension between autocratic rulers and a restless and mercurial population speaks volumes about a disillusioned people who simply want to blow things up. Director Martin Sexton was both true to his source and true to the world outside the theater’s doors with his depiction of the titular hero soliciting for votes in Rome. Perhaps most prophetically about the work is that Coriolanus finds more in common with Aufidius, the leader of Rome’s enemy, rather than with his own people. Patrick Page, who is fast becoming one of my favorite New York actors (his work in Hadestown and Deaf West’s Spring Awakening was vital), was excellent in the role of Menenius.
The other production that captivated me was, of course, New York Theater Workshop’s rendering of Othello. Of course, stars Daniel Craig (Iago) and David Oyelowo (Othello) garnered most of the attention, but they were just two components in an superlative and successful ensemble. (I can’t remember the last time I so enjoyed a Roderigo — thanks to Matthew Maher.) Director Sam Gold moved the play forward to a modern military barracks somewhere overseas. While there was nothing particularly new about this choice — the National in London had made a similar choice a couple of years ago — the exploration of character is what truly marked this Othello as one for the ages.
The over-arching question of the play is the why. Why does Iago go after Othello with such a blind fury of revenge? Iago offers a few red herrings along the way, but none of those are particularly believable. For the aforementioned National production, Rory Kinnear presented an Iago who was just a bloke simply bored out of his mind.
Craig’s choice was far more active. His Iago was one of white entitlement and resentment. Not only did that crystallize the production but sent it screaming through the night like a runaway freight train (in a good way). The caveat here is resounding. That white resentment, let loose, will destroy everything before it — even the whole wide world.
For any who don’t think Shakespeare is relevant (I’m looking at your Ira Glass), these two productions more than prove them wrong.
Yen is a Play of Tragic Devastation
I have a confession to make. I have a weakness for British social realism plays. Give me council housing, East London accents, over-consumption of Tango and Smirnoff Ice, and I’m in Heaven.
Anna Jordan’s Yen – currently playing at Lucille Lortel and produced by MCC – fits perfectly in my wheelhouse. Like all such plays that share DNA with John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, Yen chronicles the hard poverty that a not insignificant percentage of Britain’s urban population. What sets it apart, though, is a that it is just a socio-economic investigation but a moral indictment as well.
Teenager half-brothers Hench (Lucas Hedges of Manchester on the Sea) and Bobbie (Justice Smith from The Get Down) live alone in a desolate flat with only one t-shirt to share between them. They take care of – in the loosest sense of the term – Taliban, their German shepherd. Their mother Maggie (Ari Graynor) has buggered off to live with a new boyfriend. Into their lives wanders Jennifer, or Yen (Stefanie LaVie Owen), newly arrived from Wales. She tries to bring care and human affection to the boys and the dog. At first, she seems to have a positive effect on their lives, but inevitably it all goes terribly wrong and damaged people become even more (physically and emotionally) damaged.
Jordan’s work is unique for several reasons. First, sudden care after years of, well, not abuse necessarily but certainly neglect does not automatically create a positive trajectory toward reassimiliation into society. It is just as likely to create divisions, misunderstandings, and even rage. Second, both brothers are troubled to some degree or another, though Bobbie more so. They do not have the language to express their state of being. Even as Bobbie gets swept up by the Crown’s judicial system, Hench is still left hanging without a clear path to something, anything better. When he seeks out Yen at the end of the play, after all the pain she has had to endure, he desperately needs to tell her something. In an American play, this would result in a beautiful monologue where the damaged hero would tell a story that would crystallize his self-awareness and lead him down the road of recovery and redemption. Not so here. His monologue is a tangle of words and images that distills nothing. Brilliant. Third, Maggie realizes that she has failed as a mother as she sits with Bobbie at the end of the play, but in the same moment, she also realizes that she does not possess the tools to be a better mother. Progress perhaps, but only measured in millimeters.
And that leads to the new terrain Jordan treads. Yes, conditions in council housing, or projects, are bad. That is easily agreed. Here is where she pierces the heart. It is already too late, she seems to be saying. For teenagers like Hench and Bobbie, they are already past saving. It is not enough to try and salvage a bad situation. It is a moral imperative not to let that bad situation occur in the first place or there will be no escape generation after generation.
The acting is exceptional. Owen is both a tough and vulnerable Yen. Graynor is both comic and tragic, monstrous and despairing in equal measure. It catches one unaware, but her journey over the course of the play is immense and organic. Smith and Hedges both play against their more famous screen personas. Smith successfully rides the roller coaster of volatile emotions and maturity. Hedges — who has been carving a niche for himself in indie film working with such directors as Wes Anderson, Terry Gilliam, and Kenneth Lonergan – proves he has the chops to be one of our country’s great actors in the Philip Seymour Hoffman/Michael Shannon vein. His silences are filled with a wounded intensity, his line readings underscored by emotional complexity, and his sense of character revelatory.
For American audiences used to closure and the conclusion of their dramas, Yen is not always easy, but ultimately that is what makes it such a rewarding and necessary evening of theatre.
Danger and Revolution: Ike Holter’s Exit Strategy
W.E.B. Du Bois once wrote, “For education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.” That statement could serve as the epigraph of Ike Holter’s startling new drama Exit Strategy currently in previews at The Cherry Lane Theatre (co-produced by Primary Stages and the Philadelphia Theatre Company). This new work dramatizes the crisis in American education with a voice of anger tempered with compassion.
Holter is working in a similar vein to David Simon (The Wire, Treme, Show Me a Hero) in exploring the gritty reality of local politics and local corruption. The focus here is on one school on the Southside of Chicago that faces closure at the end of the school year because it is falling apart, because it has disastrous test scores, because the land is worth more than the building. At first, the faculty is bitter and resentful but ultimately passive. It takes the audacious act of a student to force them into action and to take the fight to City Hall. The resulting protest resounds with the power of the forgotten and marginalized to make those in power to take notice. Alas, like Simon, Holter eschews pollanyish endings.
Exit Strategy critiques the current socio-political state on a number of levels. First, and most obviously, there is the dissection of the indifference of City Hall to the needs of its constituents, at least its constituents who are not white or not wealthy. Second, the play serves as an expose of the current crisis in American education. There are excellent schools, just as there are excellent doctors. But if you don’t have the coin to pay for them, you are never going to receive their benefits; we can see the slow construction of a society stratified by class with the boundaries drawn by access to education. Third and finally, though, it is an attack on the indifference and apathy that seemingly infects every corner of the nation. Teachers and administrators go through the motions even though those motions are costing people their jobs, their dignity, their future.
All of which makes Exit Strategy sound didactic, which it is not. The script crackles and moves with a fleetness of foot and dark humor of individuals facing impossible odds. Essentially Holter has done what the 1980’s film Teachers was supposed to do: offer audiences a raw agitprop investigation of urban education. In this, the playwright is ably assisted by director Kip Fagan and some of the tightest ensemble acting I have seen on the New York stage in years.
Deirdre Madigan commands attention in the play’s opening scene as a teacher whose raw hostility masks a far more generous heart. Brandon J. Pierce is brings the right mixture of cockiness, anger, and immaturity to Donnie, the student who inspires the small revolution to life. Michael Cullen, Aimé Donna Kelly, Rey Lucas, and Christina Nieves occupy the spectrum of apathy and disgust that is any faculty lounge. The lynchpin is Ryan Spahn whose Ricky is the assistant principal; the various odious tasks that come down from City Hall often fall upon his shoulders. Ricky is a complicated character: an essentially nice guy with a good heart who feels that he has no choice to be the hatchet man until the scales fall from his eyes. His transformation from spineless bureaucrat to the leader of the protest is nuanced and organic. We witness a man find his own sense of moral worth. Kudos too to Holter for his decision that in making Ricky gay his sexuality became just one facet of his character not the overall defining feature of his character.
If I have one complaint about Exit Strategy it is this: it is too short. Usually it is the opposite problem, but Holter has built so much — and there journey here is long and complicated with a number of set-backs — that he needs to allow it to breathe more. Further, his characters have such interesting full lives that we want to spend more time with them. For instance, Ricky’s relationship with Rey Lucas’s Luce is rarely touched, but when it does, seems to be one of missed opportunities and two good people failing to connect and communicate with one another. Like so much else, I wish they had given more exploration. But if you left your audience wanting more, I suppose that could be classified as a good problem.
Holter’s play is ultimately a tragedy of America. Again, to quote Du Bois, “Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.” In Exit Strategy, ignorance alas wins, but it does get a fight.
[Note: This performance this writer saw as a preview performance.]
Not Even Chlorine Can Clean Away This Corruption
Lucas Hnath has written the best play David Mamet didn’t. That assessment may initially appear to be damning with faint praise. Yet, Hnath has exceeded the reach of his predecessor in several key elements.
Currently coming to the end of it’s run at New York Theatre Workshop, Hnath’s Red Speedo details the late career hopes of professional swimmer Ray (played with off-kilter intensity by Alex Breaux). The plot revolves around whether or not he took performance-enhancing drugs to aid him for his Olympic trials. The moral quagmire encompasses Ray, his brother/manager Peter (Lucas Caleb Rooney), his coach (Peter Jay Fernandez), and ex-girlfriend Lydia (Zoë Walters). Hnath shares Mamet’s ability to bring his drama alive with staccato lines spat out like frantic machine-gun fire from Apocalypse Now. He also dramatizes the moral rot that can pervade an institution and how the appearance of propriety often becomes more important than actual propriety.
Hnath excels in some compelling ways. First, in Lydia, Hnath has created a fully realized female character. Lydia is not an idea or caricature or plot device. As embodied by Walters, Lydia — even though she appears in a single scene — is fully a part of the tapestry of the world. Her reach — the effect that she has on the narrative outcome — far greater than her stage time might at first indicate. Morally damaged like the other characters, Zoë is the one who tries to find a path — stumbling in the dark as she does — to something more ethical, something that allows her to leave her past behind.
Second, the playwright carefully weaves the personal and the professional together. Choices flow organically from character, from damaged pasts, from desperation. If a character chooses a morally questionable path, the drive emanates as much from the pains of failures, the fear of abandonment and loss, and the desire to escape errors. Greed is not so much a motive as fear. That makes them more understandable, more relatable. We can bring them closer to us, rather than judging them from the distance. Of course, once we have brought Ray into our hearts — when we think he is a jerky, somewhat stupid, somewhat deluded guy — then Hnath brings down the hammer and we are confronted by the monstrosity of Ray’s actions.
And that, finally, leads to Hnath’s greatest playwriting strength: the ability to surprise. None of the salesmen of Glengarry Glen Ross are particularly likable. We see them for what they are from the start. And when they fall upon one another in the second act, it is entertaining to be sure, but the audience is kept at a distance from them; we can happily feel morally superior to them because we are removed from them. Not so with Ray. Hnath sets his drama so that we believe Peter to be the fast-talking lawyer with the ethics of a deranged squirrel while Ray has just been along for the ride but is ultimately a sweet kid, redeemable. As the play unfolds, we see different shades of both that reveal complexity and nuance to both. The playwright carefully reveals details that leave us, at the end, with the judgment of Ray that is starkly different, starkly darker than where we started.
Director Lileanna Blain-Cruz stages the drama brilliantly, and the transformation of the New York Theatre Workshop space into the side of a swimming pool serves the work admirably. Fernandez excels as the Coach, and he lays bare the contradictions of his character as he must navigate the shoals of which moral compromises to make and which to avoid.