Tag Archives: Off-Broadway

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

Decky Does a Bronco Premieres in the USA: An Interview with Producer David Gow

The Modernist Beat sat down with actor-producer David Gow to discuss his upcoming production of  Decky Does a Broncoby Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell. This production is the American premiere of the piece that first toured Scotland in 2000. [NB: There is a character “David” in the play that Gow discusses.]

THE MODERNIST BEAT: David, if I’m not mistaken, you saw a production at the Edinburgh Fringe. What attracted you to Decky Does a Bronco? 

DAVID GOW: I first fell in love with this play because of the way it handles adolescence and innocence. Maxwell identifies childhood dynamics so accurately in his writing, and he knows exactly what to strip away from the kids when they grow up.

TMB: Why bring this play from Scotland to the United States? Does it translate to the American experience?

DG: I’m particularly excited about American audiences seeing it for two reasons. The first is I’m very proud we get to be the first ones. The second is because I think our culture in the United States doesn’t handle this subject matter as well as other countries do. 

The cast of Decky Does a Bronco. From front to back: David Gow, Kennedy Kanagawa, Misha Osherovich, Cody Robinson, and Graham Baker. Photo from the production.

TMB: What does it illuminate about the “coming-of-age” narrative that perhaps an American work would not?

DG: It can be an ugly, uncomfortable topic of conversation for people, and whenever that’s the case I love when theater throws it up on stage right in people’s faces. 

TMB: Over the course of the work, the characters of the play, five boys, grow into men. The same actors play those characters at both ages. What were the challenges in making that journey? How were rehearsals structured so that the cast could believably inhabit both realities?

DG: That’s been one of the most rewarding parts of this process. We’ve done a great deal of physical improv that has really helped define the relationships within the group, and those changing relationships have dictated a lot of the behavior that shifts as we become adults. In past performances they have different actors split the role, one playing the child one playing the adult. I greatly prefer what we are doing because we get to finish the characters arc and really sit in the changes of the characters. 

TMB: What insights do you think the play offers on childhood trauma (and how that trauma continues to haunt us into adulthood)?  Also, what does it try to convey about guilt and responsibility? 

DG: That’s the big question in this story, one that the narrator David is wrestling with out loud with the audience throughout the play.

TMB: In 1990, Tim O’Brien wrote a volume of interlinked short stories entitled The Things They Carried. It focused on a platoon of young soldiers during the Vietnam War whose every action was something they carried on life (assuming they survived). But the central incident in Deckyhappens when the characters are 9. How do you dramatize “carrying” that incident into adulthood? Is it possible to strip away the judgement and focus on the complexity of it all?

DG: There’s no question that all the boys carry the incident into adulthood and that it has an influencing power as to who they become. But through the help of David the characters are all really trying to focus on the overall picture and not the looming guilt they’ve carried for years. He asks questions that are trying to help him make sense of things – how do they all continue to go on with their lives as if nothing happened, how to they now process watching similar events on the news, ect. And while David is definitely still discovering this for himself as the play goes along, I think it does offer some relief to the characters and the audience. 

TMB: What should audiences be prepared for stepping into your space? What counts as (artistic) success for you?What do you need the audience to carry with it out of the theater?

DG: I hope audiences will experience three things: 

  1. How hilarious the kids’ antics together are. 
  2. How simple and pure Douglas Maxwell’s writing is 
  3. How brilliant and unique this form of storytelling is.

TMB: What about that set?

DG: We are building a swing set ON STAGE ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF A BUILDING AND WE DO STUNTS ON IT. That alone should be reason to see this show.

Decky Does a Broncofrom Starting 5 Productions plays from September 6 – September 21 at Royal Family Productions, 145 West 46thStreet, New York City. Ethan Neinaber directs. The cast includes: Graham Baker, Gow, Kennedy Kanawaga, Misha Osherovich, and Cody Robinson. For more information and tickets, please follow this link: https://www.deckydoesabronco.com

Norma Jeane Goes Old School

Anne Carson’s Norma Jeane Baker of Troy (directed by Katie Mitchell) does what its title suggests: elides the the mythologies of Helen of Troy with those of Norma Jeane Baker (better known as Marilyn Monroe) together. This is one of the first productions playing at The Shed, the beautiful new theatrical space at Hudson Yards. However, the modernity that is very much part of the new space’s design stands in compelling opposition to the piece’s foundation in antiquity.

Many commentators and reviewers have stated that Carson’s new work is experimental. Nothing could be further from the truth. The playwright harkens back to the earliest origins of Greek tragedy and dithyrambs wherein there is a conversation between the spoken word and the sung word, between an actor and one (as is the case here) or more singers. It is the production’s great fortune to have cast two individuals who represent the very best of both professions. Ben Whishaw (Q from recent James Bond films, Lilting, Bright Star) is the actor, and Grammy Award-winner Renée Fleming is the singer. Whishaw and Fleming outwardly appear to be an executive and secretary in a Mad Men-esque office on New Year’s Eve 1964. Over the course of the evening, Whishaw evolves from the man in the grey flannel suit into something John Cameron Mitchell charted in Hedwig. And despite its very obvious exploration of the Helen of Troy myth (or conflicting myths with reference to Herodotus’s very different narrative for the tragic figure), the work reminded me of Aeschylus’s The Persians with its emotional echoes of loss and grieving.

And that is pretty much what happens. This is not a show heavy with plot. It is more of that ancient dithyramb. It is a poem told in a word and song that dance with each other and build toward an emotional epiphany if not a more familiar dramatic climax. And the poetry here not only theorizes but also seeks to understand the parallel between Helen of Troy and Marilyn Monroe; both paragons of beauty stood at the precipice offer for both their nations. That means the audience members must be active listeners and hear both the words in terms of both sound and meaning. There is very little movement, and the lighting design emphasizes darkness (far too dark, in my opinion). Carson asks that we step into the aural river and trust her and her performers on that ride through gentle currents and rapids.

It is hard to imagine this show in the hands of other performers. One of Whishaw’s many strengths as a performer is his bravery in showing his vulnerability. That ability is a necessity in channeling Marilyn Monroe and finding the truth behind the glamorous image. In this, he has a great partner in Fleming who deploys her voice to communicate the pain of both Monroe and Helen. They come together to create catharsis. Make no mistake. That is a difficult thing to experience in a theatrical setting. It requires attention in an age where attentions easily wander. I emerged from the evening somewhat exhausted but also exhilarated by what I had experienced. Audiences ready to make that commitment will be equally rewarded.

Tickets can be found by following this link: https://theshed.org/program/4-norma-jeane-baker-of-troy – it closes May 19.

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

 

 

 

 

Guirgis as Witness

James Baldwin wrote of William Shakespeare: “The greatest poet of the English language found his poetry where poetry is found: in the love of the people. He could have done this only through love – by knowing, which is not the same thing as understanding, that whatever was happening to anyone was happening to him.” Later Baldwin writes that one of Shakespeare’s duties as poet is “to bear witness”.

I believe that that aspect of Shakespeare’s legacy is something that Stephen Adly Guirgis shares.  His plays are the poetry of the people – the people that most works of American culture refuse to see (except in jail cells and witness stands in Law & Order) – and his great gift is to take the language of the streets and transform it into music. This year The Signature Theatre has produced two Guirgis plays: Jesus Hopped the “A” Train earlier this year and now Our Lady of 121st Street. Plot is not so important in either. Indeed, the major plot movements happen off stage. What is important is character: how individuals respond to terrible situations (some of which they are responsible) and how they try to progress on an arc to some better, more moral place. Those movements are often slow, laborious, and can be measured in inches rather than miles. Sometimes the epiphanies – as one might fight in the fiction of Flannery O’Connor – are too terrible to behold; a person’s moral compass may improve but not the material facts of their lives.

The revival of Our Lady of 121st Street, directed by Phylicia Rashad, is a propulsive production. A nun has died and her body has gone missing; that even at the end the question of whether that disappearance was a desecration or ascension (or both) fuels the ambiguity and complexity of the work on display. The real journey of the work is an internal one of the characters who have come to pay their respects. This is a rogue’s gallery of the desperate and the destitute. Those who have made something of themselves are in terms of spirit or soul no better off than those who have been left behind.

Yet, the play bristles with hope. Father Lux (John Doman of The Wire fame fuses a world-weariness into the role), who exhibits few of the talents or skills needed for a spiritual leader, senses a possible path to salvation. An alcoholic NYPD detective (Joey Auzenne) battles his own guilt over the loss of a loved one. A struggling actor (Kevin Isola), realizing he is in a stifling relationship with his boyfriend, seeks to carve his own path.

The music of Guirgis relies on rapid-fire dialogue and idiosyncratic monologues. They are entertaining, shocking, funny. Those qualities often mask that individual quests are underway, challenged by many a personal demon. The production has assembled an ensemble of actors that understands that the language is active, that is action. Among the highlights are Erik Betancourt (who also shined in Jesus Hopped the “A” Train)  and Maki Borden as two co-dependent brothers, Paola Lazaro as a bitter but highly intelligent con artist who may be the only character who gets what she truly wants, and Quincy Tyler Bernstine (the MVP from Vineyard’s The Amateurs) who commands in every scene she is in.

For more information about the show, please follow this link http://www.signaturetheatre.org but don’t wait too long because it closes this weekend.

 

Light Shines from the Past

In the interest of full disclosure, I believe Caryl Churchill is our greatest living playwright. I aspire in my own art to craft plays as intellectually complex, emotionally devastating, and artistically graceful as hers. As a scholar, I frequently write about her work as seminal to theatrical history. So when I heard that New York Theatre Workshop was reviving Light Shining in Buckinghamshire – her 1976 deep-dive into the religious and political causes and consequences of the English Civil War – I was all in.

For an American production in 2018, there would be many hurtles to clear. First, as a nation, we are barely familiar with our own Civil War of the 19th century, so the English Civil War of the 17th century would even more remote. Second, much of the play is culled from the historical record, so the play recreates the theological and philosophical mulling of the period. Third, a Churchill play is never a straight forward affair. There is much overlapping dialogue, scenes frequently have elliptical endings, and the silences often convey as much meaning as the dialogue.

All that said, Light Shining is a remarkably resonant play for the present moment. The play dramatizes a country breaking apart. The old order is fraying, but there is also a utopian hope for a better future. Churchill brilliantly elides the spiritual and secular as the characters, many from the lower classes, try to put their mark on history, to find a place in God’s dominion. But that utopian agenda runs aground in the Putney Debates, a long scene that concludes Act I and is the lynchpin of the play. The small “d” democratic possibilities of the war against King are extinguished as Oliver Cromwell and his allies take control of the policy agenda. Cromwell merely takes Charles I’s place and institutes a government that is even more authoritarian than the executed king’s. American audiences should be particularly attuned to how property rights eclipse individual rights.

Rachel Charkin, star director of NYTW and helmer of the exceptional Hadestown, keeps the proceedings crisp, clean, and clear. She expertly blends anachronistic elements into the historical setting to anchor the audience to the fact that though the events portrayed are historical they are relevant to our contemporary political discourse. She employs a tight ensemble of six actors while disposing of the original play’s conceit of having multiple actors play the same role. The diverse cast superbly builds this obscure world pretty much with their voices and bodies alone. I was excited to see Rob Campbell in the cast. He ranks as one of the strongest Churchill actors on this side of the Atlantic, having done such admirable work in the playwright’s Mad Forest many years ago at the Cherry Lane Theater and MTC.

James Baldwin once wrote: “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.” Light Shining demonstrates on stage how so much of we are guided by hundreds of years of history, how it is present in all we do. It also shows how utopian ideals failed in the past while offering, in its final moment (played evocatively by Mikêah Ernest Jennings), a way forward in the future.

Can There be an Ordinary Muslim in the Western World?

In his debut play An Ordinary Muslim, Hammaad Chaudry dramatizes the place of a middle-class Muslim family in twenty-first century Britain. This family is at the crossroads of Britain and Pakistan (and India),  of secularization and Islam, and of tradition and modernization. The aching theme of belonging (and feeling like one does not belong) permeates the work.

Akeem (Sanjit De Silva) and Saima (Purva Bedi) are a middle-class educated married couple living in Hounslow in the Greater London Metropolitan Area. The year is 2011. They are attempting to navigate the intersections of all the cultural imperatives pulling on them, but they seem to be groping to a stronger embrace of their Muslim faith. Saima has decided to wear her hijab to work, while Akeem is up for a promotion at his bank despite the casual racism of his supervisor. They share a house with his more tradition-bound parents Akeel (Ranjit Chowdhry) and Malika (Rita Wolf), who are themselves struggling in marriage.

Chaudry nicely avoids the melodramatic paths his tale could take and focuses on the day-to-day psychological toll of what it means to be a Muslim at such a time and such a place. These characters struggle to arrive at an authentic place for themselves despite all the nets being thrown at them, and they suffer from their lack of authenticity. When do you push to express yourself truly? When do you hold back? How important is that higher end job, wealth, status? No one fully embraces an extreme position from where there is no turning back. Even David (Andrew Hovelson), the vaguely patronizing white liberal after he gets pushed to the limit, backs down rather than goes – as would happen in a drama of lesser nuance – full UKIP.

Akeem seethes with anger. The presentation of that anger, however, comes across as inconsistent, especially in the beginning of the second act. It is not clear where exactly he stands. As his wife says at one point, “You went from No Islam to Nation of Islam in about five seconds.” The structure of the play does not clarify that confusion, so as the audience we do not know if it is a product of his own turmoil or uncertain writing choices. In contrast, in the play’s coda, when the Akeem has no direction, we have a clear sense that that comes form the character.

Chaudry, however, is revelatory with the presentation of his female characters, particularly Saima and  her sister-in-law Javeria (Angel Desai). Their lives are presented in clear, sharp, and vibrant detail. Their performances fully convey their daily struggles in a society that may tolerate them as secular individuals but once the hijab goes on, all bets are off. They are flawed people with sexual needs and an articulated agency of their own. The emerging triangle between Akeem, Saima, and the Iman’s son Hamza (Sathya Sridharan) was a breath of fresh air that blew away stereotypes of a prudish religion. It is through the women that the play is most illuminating.

Jo Benney provides vibrant direction, particularly in multi character scenes where alliances shift quickly. As Chaudry continues to grow as a playwright, he will certainly build upon his gifts and better able portray the contradictory impulses that convulse a character like Akeem.

Fire and Air Neither Burns Nor Soars

It was written by a playwright of extraordinary gifts. Its director has a track record of creating magical moments on stage. It has an impeccable cast. It has a fascinating subject. Yet, the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts. And what should have been a compelling evening of theatre rarely engages the attention of its audience.

Terrence McNally’s Fire and Air, currently playing at the Classic Stage Company, should have entranced its audience with an urgent tale of the power and necessity of art. Centering on the Ballets Russe and its impresario Sergei Diaghilev (David Hodge) as the company and leader strove to create new, dangerous, and innovative performances in the Modernist vein in the crucible of war-torn and revolution-torn Europe of the early twentieth century. It is a drama rife with possibilities. But McNally – who has effectively dramatized the power of opera in Master Class and The Lisbon Traviata – fails to make the third time to charm with the ballet. The production moves quickly through the years with little context or sense of how the cataclysmic events of the time are impacting the art.

The intended portrait of Diaghilev as visionary and genius fails to connect. We are told that he is  brilliant, but we are never shown that he is. He comes across as a child, alternating between fits of privilege or fear, rather than as someone who grasps the elemental potential of dance. His sexual domination in the first act of Nijinsky (James Cusatsi-Moyer) and in the second act of Massine (Jay Armstrong Johnson) communicates not so much as the idiosyncratic but ultimately benign behavior of a mentor and genius, but, in this age of #metoo, but as abusive practices that remind one far too much of Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. We recoil, especially as Nijinsky seems (it is really not clear) to have spiraled into madness.

The cast is game, but they are given little to do. Veteran thespians John Glover, Marsha Mason, and Marin Mazzie round out the supporting cast, but they have little impact upon the narrative momentum of the show. They observe, comment, and support Diaghilev (though, again, it is unclear as to why). The night I attended, Mazzie’s role (Misia) was performed by an understudy. Usually, that is a source of disappointment, but I do not think Mazzie would have impacted the play any more than Glover or Mason did. Hodge, the night I attended, struggled with his diction, and that was not conducive providing clarity for what was already a muddle.

The two younger performers fared better. Cusatsi-Moyer has a magnetic presence, but he seemed to be constrained by writing that demanded he only serve as enigmatic temptation. There seemed to be a fuller three-dimensional life going on behind his eyes, and it would have benefitted the production if he had been given free reign to explore that. Johnson constantly offered much-needed vitality with fresh and original choices that gave him more nuance than perhaps was intended for the boy toy du jour role.

At the end of the day, all of the talent on stage and in the production could not animate what should have been an extraordinary theatrical event.

Mankind is Sci-Fi Theatre at Its Best

Robert O’Hara’s Mankind, now playing at Playwrights Horizons, is a gonzo nuts completely off-its-rocker laugh-out-loud tragedy, and I mean that as a compliment. It was near impossible to predict how the plot would unfold from scene to scene. By intermission, my guest and I just decided to stop trying and just let O’Hara take on his roller-coaster ride of work.

I won’t say much about the plot, so you can enjoy the thrill of the ride yourself. Suffice to say, the publicity material for the show is accurate but reveals little. Hundreds of years into the future, women have died off. In order for the species to survive, men have had to adapt and so have altered the male body to support pregnancies. The dark comedy dissects media culture, religion, and, most importantly, the permanence of patriarchy. What intrigues is how many of society’s worst instincts flourish without the presence of women. O’Hara slyly builds a world where men continue to speak for women, even if they are not present.

Mankind comes at an opportune moment, and, whether intentional or not, comments on the conditions that created the #metoo movement. The men of Mankind, while not the embodiment of evil, are short-sighted, vain, narcissistic, officious, mercurial, uncaring, and unaware. They damage all they touch, and rather than seek a better way, they try to weasel out of things. They are the bull in the china shop that, after having demolished the first shop, has been taken to a second. It is a searing indictment.

The ensemble of six men is uniformly excellent, and they fulfill the most important rule of an actor appearing in a satire: to play with absolute seriousness the most ridiculous lines and actions given to you. Bobby Moreno as Jason stands-out in particular. He portrays Jason as a somewhat dim man who is also eager to exploit any opportunity for profit. Again, not wanting to give anything away, the costumes, sets, and props do justice to O’Hara’s bat-shit crazy vision. Which, again, is a good thing.

Oedipus el Rey Tells a Familiar Tale in Startling New Ways

I haven’t had a chance to sit down until now and reflect on Luis Alfaro’s Oedipus el Rey at The Public Theatre until now (three days before it closes). So I will keep this brief.

The play tells Sophocles’s infamous story through the twin lenses of modern American society and Mexican folk tradition. What is startling is how well the original holds up AND gains immediacy and relevance in its movement through time and space. Alfaro puts on stage what Sophocles puts off stage, including a particularly long and brave and compelling scene between Oedipus (Juan Castano) and Jocasta (Sandra Delgado) when they unknowingly violate the laws of both gods and men.

The play is spare and yet full. The ensemble cast performed superbly, and the more mystical effects were both of the New World and Otherworldly.