http://www.playbill.com/article/annaleigh-ashford-stephen-adley-guirgis-nikki-m-james-set-for-shakespeare-in-the-park
Tag Archives: Off-Broadway
A Revelatory Hairy Ape
It is not enough to say that The Hairy Ape, currently playing at the Park Avenue Armory and a co-production with the Old Vic, is a superlative production – though it is. It should also spark a revision of how we receive Eugene O’Neill’s work in the twenty-first century. That is a lot to place on this production, but its broad shoulder can handle the load and responsibility.
The play is not one of the better known in the O’Neill canon. I read it as part of a graduate school class on twentieth-century American drama, but have never seen it performed until now. There have been multiple productions of Long Day’s Journey, Iceman, Moon, and even the odd Anna Christie, Elms, and Wilderness. Since its 1922 premiere in New York City (transferring to Broadway from The Provincetown Players), The Hairy Ape has rarely made it onstage – a 1930 London production with Paul Robeson would certainly have been interesting but problematic through our lens of 2017.
It is easy to see why. Expressionistic, political, and focused on class in America, The Hairy Ape does not dive into the psychological complexity of its characters we associate with the playwright’s later work. That, however, does not make any less valuable and vital. The plot is simplicity itself. Yank (Bobby Cannavale), a stoker on a cruise liner, loses all sense of pride as a hard-working working class man after a brief encounter with heiress Mildred Douglas (Catherine Combs). The lion’s share of the play follows Yank as he moves through New York’s Upper East Side seeking revenge and instead finding humiliation and after humiliation. He at last arrives at the gorilla’s cage at the zoo, and even there, a hoped-for comradeship is nothing more than a pipe dream.
Sitting at the Park Avenue Armory (physically located in the midst of most of the play’s action), I felt the scales falling from my eyes. What had been relegated as an interesting curiosity from O’Neill’s early career spoke to our present moment with a clear and angry voice as any of the soliloquies from The Iceman Cometh. Here was a working class man who lost all sense of his place within the American community. With the passing of each scene, he spirals further and further downward into irrelevance. Even the Wobblies, portrayed as members of the coastal elites, have no use for Yank and throw him out the door. His tragedy (and it is a tragedy in the Ancient Greek sense) is as relevant today the drama of Lynn Nottage’s Sweat.
Hairy Ape should allow us to open our eyes to the larger O’Neill canon. Like Miller and Williams, O’Neill has become a part of the American drama museum: works from a “golden age” of theatre that are now given prestige if ultimately safe productions. The playwright chronicles those who do not fit into American life, even the relatively prosperous Tyrones. His characters have fallen into despair, financial ruin, and driftlessness. Even when O’Neill takes a certain mocking tone toward radicals and Socialists, it has much more to do with their lack of effectiveness than ideology. His America is harsh and uninviting; it is quick to destroy any and all, including its greatest adherents. Yank moves from a sense of exaggerated pride (he is the “guts” of the ship) to an ultimate desolation. Despite his physical strength, he is emotionally and psychological brittle and unprepared for the realities of a society bound up with a social hierarchy.
As Yank, Cannavale is a wonder. Whether in film (The Station Agent), television (Boardwalk Empire, Vinyl), or stage (Glengarry Glen Ross, The Motherfucker with the Hat), Cannavale is poetry in motion and action. He brings his usual vitality, energy, and intelligence – and then some! – to Yank. Thus, Yank never feels like a caricature or a representation, but a fully complex and nuanced character whose downward descent into a personal Hell, despite the expressionistic nature of the play, always feels so very, very real. The excellent cast – that feels much larger than it is – gives full and complete support to its lead. Combs hilariously portrays the petulant and spoiled Mildred. As Paddy, David Constable gives life to O’Neill’s elegiac poetry concerning life at sea (something that wends its way throughout the playwright’s career through to the famous Edmund monologue in Long Day’s Journey). Chris Bannow is a wonderfully sniveling Long.
Aletta Collins (choreographer) and Thomas Schall (fight director) have crafted a beautiful, pulsating, and textured physical life for the production; every movement adds to the narrative drive and there is not a wasted motion throughout. Director Richard Jones deserves a standing ovation in his own right. The production was flawless from the character work with the actors to the design elements to the production logistics; that it all looked so easy meant that he must have spent numerous hours of hard labor to make it all happen. His use of the Park Avenue Armory space itself was innovative, fully utilizing every nook and cranny and creating a sense of depth rarely seen outside of cinema; the upstage wall resembled, for all the world, the Odeon of Herod Atticus.
From start to finish, it was a dazzling achievement.
http://www.signaturetheatre.org/News/New-Signature-Playwrights.aspx
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.
A Tempest for Our Not So Brave New World
Better late than never. Alas, because of the political maelstrom in which we find ourselves, I can only respond to the production on a personal level.
On Friday night, January 20, 2017, I had the opportunity to see Donmar Warehouse’s production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. Beyond being an exemplary production of the Bard’s final play, it also provided a much-needed salve for my devastated soul.
Earlier that day, I had gone to the #ArtSpeaks teach-in at the Museum of Modern Art as he who shall not be named was being sworn in. The institution’s conversation about how culture can affect positive political change was uplifting, though I found myself nearly breaking down into tears. It was Phyllida Lloyd’s insightful production and the cabaret that followed that got me back on my feet.
Much has already been written on Lloyd’s deployment of an all-female cast (for this and two other Shakespeare plays: Julius Caesar and Henry IV, Part I) or setting the play in a women’s play. I must confess that I did not see the previous two works, but I found this Tempest to be staggering. Of course, Harriet Walter owned Prospero, but plaudits must be extended to the entire cast including Jane Anouka as transcendent Ariel, Sophie Stanton as a chav Caliban, and Karen Dunbar as a very Scottish Trinculo. The prison setting added a great deal to the play, as the story of The Tempest was an escape from the monotony and cold harshness of their daily existence. Lloyd revels in the magical possibilities of the play with a calypso rendition of “full fathom five” and an eerily gorgeous dance between Miranda and Ferdinand.
Walter is, of course, front-and-center through most of the proceedings. Unlike most of her male counterparts, she found the vulnerability beneath the sternness of Prospero. The most surprising – and welcome – moment can be attributed to Walter and Lloyd’s putting the utmost focus on Shakespeare’s ideas of mercy and forgiveness. Often a throw-away moment in other Tempests, Prospero forgiving Antonio served as a much-needed catharsis. That the prisoner – Hannah – who plays Prospero must continue her imprisonment (for apparently IRA-related activity) while all her compatriots find their freedom provides an elegiac coda to the whole proceeding; having her lie on a cot while reading Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed was a nice meta-touch.
After performing for two hours without intermission, the cast then performed a cabaret in the lobby. How they found the energy, I know not. It was a powerful continuation of the thematic trajectory of the production. Music and comedy created a sense of community between audience and actors. But the highlight belonged to Walter again who read Shakespeare’s monologue from The Book of Thomas More when More stops a mob from doing violence against refugees. “This is the strangers’ case/ And this your mountainish inhumanity.” As I said, salve for the soul.