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.

Kill “Sorry” and “Besides”

A tip for playwrights and screenwriters:Eliminate “sorry” and “besides” from your vocabularies. Too often I’m watching something — even a prestige production by a writer I respect — Character X will be savaging Character Y and then when the monologue is complete will add “sorry” or “besides” completely robbing the emotional power of what came before and destroying the stakes of the scene. If you are going to go to an emotionally dangerous place that might alter the relationship of your characters, you have to own it. Don’t shy away from it. Good writing is about letting your characters grow in unpredictable ways and not remain static. So, banish these two escape hatches from your work.

With Prodigal Son, Shanley is Our James Joyce

There comes a moment in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, when Stephen Dedalus, the author’s alter ego states, “Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” The novel chronicles how a young man creates himself both as an individual and as an artist. As he authors himself, he walks through the fires large — nationalism, religion — and small — the struggles of adolescence, a dysfunctional family. Last  month when I saw Prodigal Son, I came to the conclusion as the lights came up for the curtain call that, at last in John Patrick Shanley, we had our American Joyce.

Much can and has been said about Prodigal Son, but I want to here focus on that Joyce connection. Shanley, as with Joyce, has brought his adolescent self to life through words — through poetry and prose, through philosophy and theology — to be reconsidered, reexamined, to undergo catharsis as much for the audience as no doubt himself. His avatar, Jim, is truly a remarkable creation. And I should add that in Timothée Chalamet (famous for Homeland and Interstellar) Shanley has found the ideal collaborator. Actor and author do not shy away from Jim’s darkness — he says and does the stupid things teenagers often do as they wrestle with the twin tensions of childhood and adulthood — his brilliant narcissism, or his self-destructive impulses. He is not likable the way teenagers on television sit-coms are often likable. But he is engaging and endearing. His darkness is understandable, his pain a source of empathy, his yearning to connect with an world of ideas that he cannot yet quite touch remarkable. The play is no better than when Shanley lets Chalamet tear into a monologue, trip the light fantastic in a way that has the raw magic of stream-of-consciousness to find truths (human truths, perhaps, if not universal truths) in the most Joycean, or given the play’s setting in the 1960’s, Kerouacian way. The actor opens up to show us both the wonder and pain within.

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Stanley is at his most powerful when his flawed characters wrestle with faith and doubt (in reference to his perhaps most famous work). What intrigues here for Jim is the same that intrigues for Stephen: the temptation for sin he finds within and not from without. He recognizes the darkness in himself — the darkness that dwells within all of us — but he is intelligent enough (brave enough? foolish enough?) to address it and not ignore it as most do. What will win inside him? Will what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” eventually hold sway? Jim does not know. He wants to find the answer, though perhaps it too scares him.

Louise, the headmaster’s wife, tells him, “I think James Quinn is a fine outline, and it’s up to you to fill it in.” Shanley, I think bravely, undertakes the return to his tumultuous past (for the nation, for himself) to try and unlock the puzzle of his earlier life. Kudos to him for not giving us pat answers — for still not truly knowing what the answers are yet, though he surely has a better grasp of the questions.

Shanley, for me, became the American Joyce the day he decided to put Prodigal Son on stage. Here is the kicker. I do not believe he set out to do that. If he had, his work would have been derivative, pretentious, blah. He just sat out to write the most searingly honest play he could. In so doing, he stumbled onto something unintended and rare: a work uniquely specific and uniquely universal. Joyce writes of Stephen, “He did not want to play. He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld. He did not know where to seek it or how, but a premonition which led him on told him that this image would, without any overt act of his, encounter him.” Shapely could write the same of Jim.

Fugard’s New Play is Canonical

I had the opportunity this past weekend to see Athol Fugard’s new play The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek at the Signature Theater in New York. Fugard has added a nuanced and multi-layered work to his canon. The fact that he is closing in on 83 and still able to grow as a playwright speaks to the power of his voice and to the great well of the stories he still needs to tell.

The play is set in two time periods: 1981 (apartheid era) and 2003 (post-apartheid era). The beginning is deceptively simple. Nukhain (Leon Addison Brown), a worker on a ranch in Mpumalanga Province, spends what little free time he has from his labors to paint rocks (what he refers to as his “flowers”) on the side of a desolate hill. Not many people see them, but this project provides an outlet for his artistic self. But this day is unlike the rest. He faces a giant boulder, the last rock to be painted on the hill. Instead of turning it into a massive flower, he uses it instead as a canvas to tell his own story, to provide his own history. At the same time, he has taken a young worker Bokkie (Caleb McLaughlin) a young worker under his wing. What he has painted frightens and excites both of them. It is unlike anything that he has ever done. However, the mistress of the farm Elmarie (Bianca Amato) shows up and is at first puzzled and then disturbed by this new work. She wants Nukhain to remove it and go back to painting one of his flowers. Bokkie objects, but Nukhain agrees.

The second act jumps ahead over 20 years. Bokkie has now grown up and is a teacher, Jonathan (Sahr Ngaujah). His mission is to restore Nukhain’s painting. After a tug-of-war with Elmarie, he at last has permission to do so.

The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek is a wrenching work. Fugard proves again that he is a master of the genre in that he essentially sneaks up behind the audience at about the 40-minute mark in Act One and hits it in back of the head with a two-by-four (metaphorically speaking). Fugard conveys the complexities of a nation torn apart by years of strife and racial animosity. His great gift of weaving tales of the downtrodden with lyricism and empathy is, of course, present. Here, though, he examines culture, and the threat that black culture posed to the apartheid regime.

So long as Nukhain painted flowers on rocks, it was fine. Beautiful, yes, but with no significance whatsoever. Once, though, he tries to tell his story – which is not particularly political, but because this is South Africa is de facto political – then his work becomes dangerous and must be destroyed. Though physical violence is implied throughout, none is perpetuated on stage. And yet, Elmarie’s determination to remove the painting (which, by the way, appears as an extraordinary piece of African Art) is the greatest violence of them all.

 

That Fugard is able to convey all the horrors of the apartheid regime in this one understated moment speaks volumes about his talents as an artist. And let us not be mistaken. Though the actions of the play are specific to South Africa, the work speaks as much to any nation where a ruling class seeks to erase the culture of a disenfranchised group. It is a play that needs to be seen, should be seen – it also needs to be a play that is forever cemented in the canon.

Doctor Who and the Impossible Collaboration

This is something I have been meaning to post for some time. With the exception of the inaugural episode “Deep Breath” (dinosaurs, cyborgs, Victorian London), I have been quite taken with this season of Doctor Who. Peter Capaldi has made quite an impression as The Doctor, and that has caused me to ponder. My train of thought follows.

Up until now, I had been disappointed with Steven Moffat’s tenure as show runner for the series. I was out-and-out hostile as some on the Internet seemed to be. But there was always something missing. But I couldn’t put it together. I like Matt Smith’s Doctor. I had liked Moffat-penned episodes from the Russell T. Davies era; “Blink”, of course, stands out in particular. I liked Amy, I liked Rory, and I liked Amy & Rory. I wasn’t sure how Clara fit in with the #11 emotionally, but that wasn’t surprising. But other than “Vincent and the Doctor” and “The Day of the Doctor” — with “The Doctor’s Wife” as a possible runner-up — none of the episodes from the first three years stood out as classic and necessary episodes that needed to added to pantheon of the canon.

And then comes “Robot of Sherwood” and “Time Heist”, which are definitely a couple of outings that can hold their heads high on the fun end of the spectrum, and “Into the Dalek” and especially “Listen” which are some of the darker and more disturbing pieces from the whole of the program’s run. “Listen” has some startling twists and turns that genuinely surprised this writer.

So what changed? Yes, they brought on some new directors, including Ben Wheatley (one of the great directors of the British indie scene). And, of course, the elephant in the room: Capaldi.

Is that all it takes to make a good show great? Change your lead?

Yep.

There is something very special and wonderful and impossible to define about the collaboration between writer and actor. You can have skilled and talented actors and writers, but if the magic, the alchemy, the shared sixth sense is not there, the work while still good will lack that ability to create something transcendent in its audience. Maybe Moffat, a Scot, can only write for Scottish doctors (David Tennant and Capaldi) — I kid, but only a little. With Capaldi, he found an outlet for his voice that clicked. And perhaps Capaldi too found new levels of meaning and emotional intricacy that Smith could not. Even Jenna Coleman, who was a character with too many plot devices last year, really shines this year and is on fire in her two-handers with Capaldi.

There is a reason that Martin Scorcese always used to work with Robert de Niro and now Leonardo DiCaprio. Or John Ford with John Wayne. Or Woody Allen with Diane Keaton. At its best, the successful actor/writer/director collaboration creates a language all its own. Despite the presence of a Tardis, dinosaurs on a spaceship, Daleks, and Cybermen, Doctor Who, like all great science fiction, works best when the humanity of its key players is front and center. And now that is what Moffat has found in the 8th year of The Doctor Who reboot. Miracles more often that not happen in the writers’ room, not a time machine.

All You Need is a Man with a Rhyme

Last night, I had the good fortune of seeing A Sucker Emcee at the Labyrinth Theatre.  Craig muMs Grant — rap artist, poet, playwright, actor (Oz) — performs a rap/poetry/dramatic monologue. Rich Medina provides key support as a DJ; though silent throughout, he creates conversation with muMs and serves as chorus to the play. A Sucker Emcee is at once very new and very old. And it is because it very much dwells in this paradox that it is an extremely powerful, honest, and wrenching evening of theatre.

I consciously used the term “chorus” above because muMs and his director Jenny Koons craft something very elemental here. Before Thespis stepped before an audience as something other than himself, theatre was a poet and a musician weaving a tale on stage. The music is hip-hop; the theatricality is elemental, primal, old when the Dionysia. If you don’t think that such an old form has relevance to the modern theatrical sensibility, go to Labyrinth and be amazed.

muMs tells the story of his life, his artistic life, how he came to be a poet, a rapper, an emcee. It is a life of triumphs and tragedies, mistakes comic and painful, good times turned bad and bad times turned good — because it is a life. The poet came of age in the Bronx in the late 70’s and 80’s. He touches on how his youth intersected with the birth of hip-hop. In so doing, he fits very much into that vein of American poetry that finds its home at that intersection of the personal and the political, the historic sweep of a nation or community and the closely observed moment of the individual. Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara and James Baldwin would welcome muMs into their clubhouse with open arms.

It is the great paradox — its magic, its genius, its madness — that the more specific a work is, the more universal it is. James Joyce’s Ulysses testifies to that wonder. When you sit in the dark and are caught in the rhythm and rhyme of the performance, you cannot help but be carried away to a place of emotional truth caught floating on the rushing current of the elegance and rawness of his verse. muMs’ family is not your family, muMs’ struggles are not your struggles — and yet you recognize your family, your struggles in the frenzy of his poetry. It is a supremely human moment that only theatre can provide. What hits home is the extreme humanity of this gifted compassionate man who wrestled with his fears and became the artist of authenticity that he wanted to be.

Go. Be amazed.

 

Link

My adaptation of Jack London’s “A Thousand Deaths” is currently performing at this year’s NYC International Fringe Festival. Here is a link to a review from IndieTheaterNow.com:

http://nytheaternow.com/Content/Article/a-thousand-deaths

CORE CREATIVE PRODUCTION’S A THOUSAND DEATHS PLAYING NYC FRINGE ‘14

New York, NY/Jul 20, 2014 (For Immediate Release) – Core Creative Productions is delighted to announce that its production of A Thousand Deaths by Anthony P. Pennino has been accepted for the New York City Fringe Festival ’14. The play will perform at 64E4 Mainstage (Venue #11) on East 4th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. The dates of the show with curtain are as follows: Wednesday 8/13 (2:45pm), Friday 8/15 (7pm), Sunday 8/17 (8 pm), Monday 8/18 (7 pm), and Saturday 8/23 (2pm); there will be a talkback after the final performance. The show lasts approximately one hour.

Adapted from Jack London’s science-fiction short story of the same name as well as other material by the famed author, A Thousand Deaths takes the audience to The Philippines at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War. Joshua (Sean Hoagland), a noted scientist, has discovered what he believes to be the key to death itself. He must, however, test this cure to determine if it is truly effective, and so he kills and restores his test subject, Henry (Blake Merriman), multiple times. As Henry slips between this world and the next, he encounters a mysterious figure in the form of his old shipmate O’Brien (Peter Collier). A Thousand Deaths explores questions of immortality, scientific ethics, and the very nature of human survival.

A Thousand Deaths had its world premiere in January 2014 as part of The Gilded Festival at The Metropolitan Playhouse.The original cast from that run is returning for the Fringe production.

Core Creative Productions Core, located in New York City, was founded by Alberto Bonilla, Elizabeth Inghram, and Anthony P. Pennino.  Previous productions have included Dia de los Muertos by Pennino, which premiered at Teatro La Tea in July 2011 and RINO by Zack Calhoon, which premiered at the Brick Theater’s Democracy Festival in June 2012. Visit us at www.corecreativeproductions.com

Jack London (1876-1916) is the author of such famed novels as Call of the Wild and White Fang. “A Thousand Deaths” (1899) has the distinction of being the first work of his to be published.

Some Quick Thoughts on HBO’s The Normal Heart

After much trepidation, I finally got around to seeing HBO’s The Normal Heart. I started working in NYC theatre in the early 1990’s, at the end of the great wave of the epidemic the play explores. At that time, there were many ghosts, and there were some still suffering, still dying. I remember my supervisor at my Broadway internship. He was HIV-positive which later developed into AIDS. He died a little while later. His family — strict Irish Catholics from Boston — did not attend, would not attend his funeral. So it goes.

I’m going to get into trouble for this, but here goes. The Normal Heart is not a good play, at least not in the traditional sense. It is half screed, half narrative. It is angry, and it is right in its anger. It has all of the power of the theatre, not in the aesthetic sense but in the political one. It lacks the eloquence, the poetry, the imagination of Angels in America, but it is necessary nonetheless. Mark Ruffalo is quite the fine actor, but, perhaps counter-intuitively, he brought too much talent to the role, too much nuance. Ned Weeks is more a figure of agitprop than a fully rounded character. He needs to be angry. He needs to be always angry. He needs to be a very hot knife cutting through a butter of apathy, hypocrisy, and cruelty. Ruffalo was…too nice. Much attention has (rightly) been paid to Matt Bomer’s performance. I would also point out the excellent work Jim Parsons in a not very flashy role did. A flawed adaption of a tough play. Still glad HBO committed to it. It’s important.

A Plea at Semester’s End: A Poem

The semester has been rough,
The semester has been tough,
The semester has been disastrous,
Still and all,
Read the damn syllabus.

There has been snow, wind and rain to vex,
We’ve even had the occasional polar vortex,
The weather all around has been miserablus
Still and all,
Read the damn syllabus.

You’ve had papers, quizzes, and tests,
You’ve had to attend the lectures of guests
You’re overwhelmed by Shakespeare and calculus,
Still and all,
Read the damn syllabus.

Fear of disease has made you psycho
Fending off measles, mumps, and mono.
There is always the danger of syphilus.
Still and all,
Read the damn syllabus.

Questions you have are many — it’s true.
Your confusion about requirements have made you blue.
But you are literate and hopefully a genius
So by all that is holy
Read the damn syllabus!