Tag Archives: Playwriting

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:

How hilarious the kids’ antics together are.
How simple and pure Douglas Maxwell’s writing is
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 46^thStreet, 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.

Mothers, Sons, and the Passing of the Torch

My old playwriting professor, Howard Stein, used to say, when evaluating students’ work offered up in class, “You’re hiding! You’re hiding!” This critique was often given to young writers who often danced around what their plays wanted to be and should have been about. I have a feeling that Professor Stein would have said much the same to Terrence McNally after reading his Mothers and Sons.

To be fair to McNally, he has good reason to avoid the heart of his drama. In short, the play concerns Cal Porter (Bill Mootos), who survived the AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s and early 1990’s but who also lost his lover, Andre, of the time. It is a sequel of sorts to McNally’s television play Andre’s Mother; it also converses with the AIDS plays of the 1980’s such as Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart. That mother, Katharine Gerard (Annette Miller), returns to New York City to return Andre’s diary to Cal. Cal is a survivor, and, Mothers and Sons is as much about surviving catastrophic circumstances as are David Rabe’s loose trilogy on the Vietnam War. But McNally keeps steering away from the beating heart of his play, from the trauma of his characters’ past as well as his own.

Much of the early portion of this play trades in strained humor about the minutiae of Manhattan upper-middle-class life (e.g. what those on the West Side versus East Side refer to as “The Met”). McNally, like 1990’s era Woody Allen, name checks bourgeois cultural touchstones without really delving into them in any meaningful way. Cal has moved on. He is now has a husband – Will Ogden (David Gow) – and a son – Bud (in my performance, Evan Miller). While he has moved on, life has conspired to chain Katharine to the past. He offers a potent set-up for an explosive drama, but the playwright keeps sidestepping it with heavy-handed maneuvering of the cast to switch move individuals on and off-stage so we are constantly mired in more comedic two-hander scenes instead of more dramatic three-handers.

However, the pain that McNally wants paradoxically both explore and avoid lurks just beneath the surface. The responsibility of any production of this work is to allow that pain to slip through the cracks, to transcend from sub-text to text, and rampage across the playing space. I am happy to report that the production at Shakespeare & Company under the direction of James Warwick let’s that pain out of the cage and rampage across the stage. Though he must bend to the sentimentalization of the play (an unearned family portrait at the coda), he mines the tragedy for the maximum impact on the audience.

Mootos and Miller in their early scenes frequently devolve into mannered performances as they struggle with one of the play’s main structural issues: why does Katharine not leave? But once the comedy of manners is put aside in favor of the conflict over Andre’s legacy, they find their voice and stride. The rawness that characterized McNally’s work when he was a protege of Albee is cathartic. Gow expertly marries civility with rage as he must t negotiate with the continuing shockwaves from the death of someone he has never met. A recent graduate of the School of Arts from the University of North Carolina, Gow is on his way to becoming one of our leading interpreters of McNally having starred in the title role in a New York revival of Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone? this past winter. Through sheer force of charisma, Evan Miller as Bud built an island of calm in an otherwise stormy night of the theatre. Set designer Patrick Brennan ably recreates a West Side apartment in winter for the Berkshires in the summer.

In short, this a flawed but important play that benefits from a superlative production. It serves as a strong lead-in for Shakespeare & Company’s production of Taylor Mac’s Hir.

Chekhov on Crack

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Cocktails and Conversation

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

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

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

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

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

Link

A Theatre of Contemplation

Usually the kind of theatre that captures my attention has a more political dimension, it has an earnest desire to convince its audience of something. The narrative propels one forward to a needed and decisive conclusion. Claire van Kampen’s Farinelli and The King is a not work of power, but of peace. It is not a construction of plot but of meditation. As 2017 gives way to 2018, this is exactly the kind of theatre we need.

Based on the historical record, Farinelli and the King tells of the famous castrato, who is brought from Covent Garden to the palace of the King of Spain. Only Farinelli’s voice can soothe King Philippe V’s troubled mind (he probably suffered from a bipolar disorder). By the play’s end, Farinelli, who has fallen in love with Queen Isabella, departs, and the King falls back into his old behavior. That’s it. That’s the plot. But that does not describe the show.

The title tells us much, and it is a play on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I. For van Kampen’s the “King”is now the “I’. Philippe, much as we do, suffers from the crush of politics and the inevitable course of policy: war. Farinelli, as an embodiment of art (specifically music), offers escape, a positive alternative to a world moving toward chaos (the Seven Years’ War and the American and French Revolutions are in the not too distant future).

The governing idea here is that the magic of the theatre (not film magic transferred to the stage but honest-to-God theatrical magic) can offer sanctuary and solace. So we find ourselves at the intersection of the theatre, opera, music, and candlelight – especially candlelight. Originally performed at the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse which can only be lit with means available in the seventeenth century, the strength of the piece relies on it being lit by candle and utilizing technology only available in the Restoration. Indeed, I have a hard time imagining future productions of the work; the chances are high they will not understand this important aspect the alchemy. John Dove’s direction is as necessary to the proceedings as the script. [I am saddened that I did not get to see it the original run in London, but I did see Aidan Gillen do a reading of James Joyce’s “The Dead” in the Wanamaker, so I can only imagine the magic of Farinelli in that space.]

The role of Farinelli is shared by two performers. First, Sam Crane (who pops up in The Crown to dish the dirt on Jackie Kennedy) acts Farinelli when he is not performing, while (in my performance) Iestyn Davies becomes his voice when performing. During such moments, both Crane and Davies are on stage. I liked the split. It was simple, and it conveyed (much as Deaf West’s Spring Awakening did with the the teenagers) the division within Farinelli himself: his internal passion and longing and external hesitation and sense of self-doubt.

Anchoring it all is, of course, Mark Rylance as Philippe V. Rylance is one of my theatrical heroes, and having now seen him in Jerusalem, Twelfth Night, Richard III, Nice Fish as well as his recent television and film work, he continues his trajectory of brilliance. Though the performing the King, Rylance is in the interesting position of actually serving as the audience’s surrogate. As he becomes bewitched by the music (mostly Handel), he gives permission for the house to do the same. His (mostly) quiet performance is infectious. He builds the bridge to the music, which can only be felt and not explained. Melody Grove, whose Isabella is the prime mover and shaker in the play, rounds out the three leads and holds her own in matching wit against wit.

The script does not concern itself much beyond that. van Kampen, who is married to Rylance, skimps on the details of Farinelli’s harrowing childhood and his complex relationship with his brother. It hardly matters. One goes to Farinelli and the Kingto have the weight of the twenty-first century taken off the shoulders for a couple of hours and to find solace in beauty.

More information about the show can be found here: http://www.farinelliandthekingbroadway.com

Link

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/as-tourist-friendly-musicals-take-over-broadway-no-longer-belongs-to-playwrights/2017/12/27/2826fd20-d930-11e7-8e5f-ccc94e22b133_story.html?utm_term=.adac8249ea94

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.