Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.
Young David Huntington (Drew Ledbetter) is son and unwitting heir to a family fortune with a prestigious charitable foundation. It seems at first that he’s trying to give meaning to a privileged life by ricocheting from Habitat For Humanity in Mississippi to Uganda, where research on HEC (Human Elephant Conflict) is taking place.
The latter, this play’s fascinating, though unsuccessfully integrated parallel, shows that elephants are, in many surprising ways, quite like humans; that they actually do remember, suffer, and mourn (as well as protect/nurture and play) much as we do and that human-perpetrated traumas hold just as fast as ours.
An ex-circus beast, having been sent to a refuge, will not allow anyone close enough to take off his iron ankle cuff for 5 years while he learns to trust. A bull elephant who kills a man returns to the spot daily, stroking the rock against which the man’s head was bashed, wailing. Grisly consequences of ivory trafficking is also noted. A hundred elephants are slaughtered daily.
(A Trunklines pamphlet available just outside the theater which describes the animals’ plight and the The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee represented here is a revelation.)
Claire Warden, Richard Prioleau
David’s college friend/mentor Elijah (a palpably earnest Richard Prioleau) lives in Uganda with his lover Carly (Claire Warden), a hedonistic, touring violinist who comes and goes as career dictates, adding spice to the relationship. Oddly, we never learn what Elijah does for a living. Exploring his obvious love (and, later, implied desire) for the young man is curiously eschewed for importance given to Carly’s sexual and drug appetites. (The loose-limbed Warden embodies these with appealing gusto.)
Elijah has provided David introductions to missionary? social worker? Olivia (a completely credible/grounded Victoria Vance) working with literacy and poverty issues in Uganda, knowledgeable about local customs. Do we, however, need to see her at an AA meeting in order to glean that she too carries burdens? (Notwithstanding, it’s skillfully written.)
Drew Ledbetter, Victoria Vance
And Kaesem (the solid Ariel Estrada), a passionate (he cries) wildlife biologist studying elephants in Africa and then the United States. Asked by both Olivia and Kaesem to what end he’s conducting research, David’s at a complete loss. Distracted and in pain, we slowly learn he’s running from memories of the violent deaths of his mother and brother.
Ariel Estrada, Drew Ledbetter
David’s home life, i.e. normalcy, is represented by his father’s fiancé, Marie (Lisa Bostnar) who tries to befriend him. Assumed to be a gold-digging usurper, she is, in fact, genuine. Scenes with his soon-to-be stepmother expose the protagonist as spoiled and self indulgent, rather than, not in addition to, being seriously disturbed. One can’t help but wonder whether this is intentional. The terrifically real, sympathetic Bostnar is an utter pleasure to watch, but here, as with Elijah, we are given unnecessary information during a visit to her dead husband’s grave. An otherwise well conceived monologue.
Drew Ledbetter, Lisa Bostnar
Playwright Jackob G. Hofmann can clearly write. In this play, however, he seems to have been carried away by his own dialogue. Diverting exposition makes the piece feel jerky, muddling essential plotline, losing the interesting elephant metaphor in the shuffle.
Drew Ledbetter (David) is the weak link in a talented cast. When silent, he appears neither overwrought nor emotionally riveted elsewhere, but rather as if reviewing his grocery list. Outbursts thus are less effective, yet interaction is bland without them.
Director Jessi D. Hill keeps her players moving in a kind of theatrical caucus race, circling between scenes, setting the stage, posing, alighting in the back when not speaking. Accents are varied contributing to authenticity. Except for David, characters listen and respond. Olivia and Carley are portrayed with specific, illuminating physicality.
Parris Bradley’s Scenic Design is a fanciful representation of African materials. Despite not quite understanding what we’re looking at, he creates atmosphere. Crates combined to form furniture also inexplicably work.
Valerie Joyce’s Costumes aptly describe each character, though what Carly is doing with plastic leggings in African heat is puzzling. Lighting Designer Greg Solomon contributes immensely to the piece, utilizing shadow and color. Inappropriate swing music played before curtain couldn’t be more wrong for the production.
Photos by Russ Roland Opening: The Company
A Persistent Memory by Jackob G. Hoffman Directed by Jessi D. Hell The Beckett Theater 410 West 42nd Street Through June 18, 2016
In essence, Shining City (last seen here on Broadway in 2006), is another of playwright Conor McPherson’s ghost stories. This one, however, alludes not only an “actual” spirit, but city lives lived, despite liaisons, without roots or attachments, adrift in limbo.
Still living with unopened cartons, fledgling therapist Ian (Billy Carter) welcomes his first patient with professionalism that covers insecurity. John (Matthew Broderick) evidently tried to get an appointment with a psychiatrist recommended by his doctor, but waiting time was four months. We never learn how he found Ian. John’s problem, emerging in the fits and starts of an otherwise, one suspects, taciturn man, is that his wife Mari is appearing in the house weeks after she died in a particularly grisly car crash. The patient is so badly shaken, he’s moved into a B & B.
Lisa Dwan, Billy Carter
John and Mari barely communicated when she was alive. He had no idea she was out the night she died or where she was going. If they’d only communicated. If they’d only been able to have children. Is she now trying to punish her husband or to tell him something?
Ian is –surprise!- visited by Neasa (Lisa Dwan) the mother of his baby. Despite an argument, oblivious to exit statements, she expected him home days ago. Stuck in his brother’s house, life’s become ostracized hell. We learn some of Ian’s backstory, viable reasons for his feeling troubled. He will, he promises, be responsible.
Next we look in on the therapist one night when he’s picked up Laurence (James Russell) in a park. Homeless, in debt, and also a father, the man is reduced to selling himself in order to be able to go back to temporary digs. This is Ian’s awkward first time with a man. It doesn’t turn out as planned.
Billy Carter and James Russell; Billy Carter
Furniture is moved, cartons packed. Ian is once again moving. John returns for a last visit. Both his and Ian’s lives have radically changed. Or have they?
McPherson’s episodic piece is fatalistic. These are four characters without real homes, in search of connection, who “affiliate” but seem not to bond. Loneliness in a crowd. Less poignant than numb. Uncomfortably familiar. Even the building’s door buzzer never gets fixed.
Director Ciaran O’Reilly makes us feel like voyeurs. Even the playwright’s signature, fragmented dialogue arrives authentic. Each actor wears anxiety and disassociation a bit differently; the sum may make you squirm. Raised voices are never gratuitous. In fact, tensions often show themselves in small ways like John’s hand upon the couch arm, a single finger twitching or Laurence’s sudden, yet ambivalent move towards John. Ian’s unwitting smiles at some of what John tells him are priceless.
Billy Carter (Ian) is an onstage natural. The actor uses his character’s feelings to color every word and move or lack thereof rather than demonstrate them. He is here, palpably, a man shut off from himself as well as the world.
Matthew Broderick (John) begins a victim of our familiarity. It takes awhile to accept his pronounced Irish accent. Drawn sympathetically to the turbulence that drives him, however, we become as accustomed to it as we do to his self-flagellating guilt. Broderick is a master of hesitant, confused delivery. His everyman persona serves the role. John could be your friend, your neighbor.
An unnerving play.
Charlie Corcoran’s Set is appropriately utilitarian and minimal with details reflecting an old building.
The newly renovated Irish Repertory Theater is more comfortable, more accessible, and more spacious. A venerable and worthy institution begins another act like a phoenix rising from plaster and sawdust.
Photos by Carol Rosegg Opening: Matthew Broderick, Billy Carter
Shining City by Conor McPherson Directed by Ciaran O’Reilly Irish Repertory Theatre 132 West 22nd Street Through July 3, 2016
Four time Pulitzer Prize winner, Eugene O’Neill, wrote 26 short plays and 20 full-length pieces. His iconic Long Day’s Journey Into Night, shortlisted as one of the most important plays of the 20th century, is on Broadway as I write. With Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, O’Neill is said to have introduced dramatic realism into American Theater.
The playwright, raised in a touring theater family, held a wide variety of itinerant jobs before he became an author. He was a depressive, an alcoholic, suffered from tuberculosis, and attempted suicide. It’s therefore something of a revelation to watch the second and better of these two plays, Now I Ask You (1916), which sounds for all the world like it might have been written by George Bernard Shaw.
Terrell Wheeler and Emily Bennett
In this satire – yes, O’Neill wrote satire! – Lucy Ashleigh (Emily Bennett) is a pampered, upper class, young woman who immerses herself in every ideological, artistic, Bohemian philosophy that comes along with the swooning fervor of Sarah Bernhardt in high dudgeon. The night before her wedding to straight arrow Tom Drayton (Terrell Wheeler), she calls off the ceremony. Marriage, she declares, is “the meanest form of slavery.” Only free love will allow Lucy’s spirit to expand and blossom.
Her conservative father, Richard Ashleigh (David Murray Jaffe), is apoplectic; her fiancé understandably distressed. Wise and wily mother Mary (Kim Yancey-Moore), however, takes this latest obsession in stride and manages to turn the situation around by convincing Lucy to “sacrifice herself” so that Tom won’t face snubs, to marry him but with their own secret, independence-based contract. Taking Tom aside she suggests he neither discourage nor obviously tolerate Lucy, but let her grow out of each new fad in its own time. He agrees.
Kim Yancey-Moore and Emily Bennett
Lucy’s contract sounds contemporary and fair, though it includes foregoing children in order to help those less fortunate and both partners’ being able to take additional lovers. Tom bites his tongue assuming things will change. They marry. We next meet in the Drayton home three weeks later. (Mama is visiting.) The new bride, at first enthusiastic, is bored with the country “… sigh… Nature is making a vulgar display of sun…”
Into her restless orbit comes flamboyant, romantic poet Gabriel Adams (Eric R. Williams) who’s living with her friend, free thinking painter, Leonora Barnes (Dylan Brown). Think Bloomsbury Group to picture both. Gabriel is everywhere Tom turns. What can a loving husband do not to throw oil on the fire? Lucy’s mother has a plan…which almost, but not quite backfires. The well acted and directed play is full of innuendo and wit.
Dylan Brown and Eric R. Williams
Of special note: Emily Bennett’s Lucy poses like an Edward Gorey character in pastels. Her obtuse, self serving behavior remains innocent in the actress’s capable hands. We believe she believes. It’s difficult to walk this line without slipping into parody. Bennett is skilled and appealing. Here, a palpably light spirit.
Kim Yancy-Moore (Mary Ashleigh) is a pleasure to watch observing and subtly reacting to what goes on around her. She lets us see her character think; laughs credibly, speaks with measured consideration, and moves with good breeding. The actress is fully present even when silent. Her comic timing is pristine.
Eric R. Williams (Gabriel Adams) creates the kind of egotistical artist who perpetually gets away with things by attractive pandering. “I’m used to suffering, but you, you must not disturb your fine, inner spiritual nature!” Williams’ slow broadening of Adams’ increasingly apparent playacting works well.
Terrell Wheeler (Tom Drayton) has the ballast role here. The actor seems sincere and authentic without seeming too cliché. When he finally has the opportunity to display humor, he proves himself able.
With a three sided audience, Direction might be a challenge, but Alex Roe keeps his cast logically moving to give everyone ample view while always serving the play. Multiple entrance and exit options are used to great advantage. Characters who are meant to overplay do so with finesse, only a couple less consistently than the others. The act/react ratio couldn’t be better. Physical acting is as specific as costuming.
Kelly King and Erin Beirnard
The evening’s first play, Recklessness (1913) teeters at the brink of melodrama: Mildred Baldwin (Erin Beirnard), much younger wife of wealthy, traveling businessman Arthur (Kelly King) has an affair and falls in love with her chauffer, Fred (Jeremy Russial) while her husband’s away. Housemaid Gene (Eden Epstein), who was thrown over for Mildred, stalks the couple and reveals their secret to her employer. Horrible consequences are engineered as if by Machiavelli (or Rod Serling).
The only actor on the stage who fully holds his own is Kelly King who presents pompous, upper crust Arthur with imperious ease and fury. Only a moment of physical violence he shares with Epstein reads false. (Fight Choreography- John Long)
Kelly King and Eden Epstein
Eden Epstein begins well but falters as if unsure of Gene’s feelings when confronting Mr. Baldwin.
Minimal Sets also by Alex Roe are period accurate, utilitarian and sufficiently evocative. The appearance of a stairway is a surprise. Doors and windows are cleverly mobilized.
Sidney Fortner’s Costume Design is as good as anything one sees with considerably larger budgets. Every look not only suits, but is beautifully tailored. Bohemian characters are particularly well imagined as is a simply splendid negligee. Only Leonora’s black shoes with a white dress are – wrong.
This company is new to me and one clearly worth awareness.
Photos by Svetlana Didorenko Opening: Terrell Wheeler, Kim Yancey-Moore, Dylan Brown
Metropolitan Playhouse presents O’Neill (Unexpected): Two Early Plays by Eugene O’Neill: Recklessness (1913) and Now I Ask You (1916) Metropolitan Playhouse 220 East 4th Street Through June 26, 2016
a lover, especially the illicit partner of a married person.
The best thing about Cirque du Soleil’s latest attempt to gain a foothold in New York are its circus acts, particularly the work of Associate Creative Director/Acrobatic Designer & Choreographer, Shana Carroll,Flying Machine Design & Choreography by Verity Studios, and Acrobatic Performance Designer, Boris Verkhovsky. This is ironic as Cirque du Soleil Theatrical intended to breach Broadway with a book musical format.
The Company
The show-stopper is a three person aerial ballet with Martin Charrat, Myriam Deraiche and Samuel William Charlton which poeticizes the musical’s love triangle. This exquisite trio is breathtakingly graceful and highly skilled. Choreography is simply beautiful. The audience cheers. A second appealing demonstration of in flight acrobatics by identical twins Andrew and Kevin Atherton swings the duo out over its audience with style and synchronicity. While the first act is watched by the show’s protagonists keeping our focus, the second competes with a stage set for Hellzipoppin’s idea of Cleopatra and all sorts of things going on.
Acrobats; Martin Charrat, Myriam Deraiche and Samuel William Charlton
The directorial credo of Paramour appears to be more is better. Scenes are overstuffed with competition for our attention, perhaps in order to distract from a thin book and bland/ utilitarian songs, few of whose lyrics are intelligible. (Sound Design-John Shivers) Broadway artists Jeremy Kushnier – the Director AJ, Ruby Lewis – our heroine Indigo, and Ryan Vona -her boyfriend Joey are, more often than not, surrounded by acrobats, jugglers, dancers, balancing, teeterboard, contortion and aerial acts…not to mention sometimes excessive video, as they ostensibly move the plot along. So much for emotional investment.
Among its musical theater performers, the attractive Ruby Lewis shines like a diamond. Ms. Lewis has a terrific Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-here-I-am voice, dances splendidly (replete with cartwheel and split), and manages to make her character sympathetic with little theatrical ammunition. Brava. One hopes she gets lots of work from this.
Ruby Lewis, Jerey Kushnier, Ryan Vona
So here’s the plot. It’s the golden age of Hollywood-a visual mashup. Megalomaniac Director AJ fires his current leading lady for being less than fully committed i.e. she’s romantically involved. His stalwart assistant hauls him off to a nightclub where he sees Midwest innocent Indigo (not exactly a corn-belt name choice) sing. Eureka! It’s his hopefully malleable new star. AJ hires the girl and her clean cut composer boyfriend Joey (to write the film’s love song) on the spot. Voila the love triangle.
Reed Kelly, Sarah Meahl and The Company
Indigo is, of course, good at everything, which is convenient as AJ has her do everything from an ersatz Seven Brides for Seven Brothers hoedown number to playing Cleopatra. The director –big surprise- grows increasingly possessive. His leading lady is dazzled but true to Joey who’s having trouble writing the required song without his muse and, it turns out, his lyricist. She, in turn, says she can’t author words about what she hasn’t experienced: love. What?! Besides, she’s pretty busy working during the day and being squired around at night. When AJ demands she choose between career and Joey, she succumbs, agreeing to marry him…but then changes her mind. The lovers flee provoking a chase on rooftops which turn out to be made of trampolines. (One of several fine Sets by Jean Rabasse).
Fletcher Blair Sanchez
Projections designed by Olivier Simola and Christophe Waksmann are sometimes wonderful and at others trite psychedelics – a giant eye-really?! And what’s going on with the nightmare segment?! For anyone particularly interested in the medium, however, the show is a must on the basis of both imagination and technical expertise.
Philippe Guillotel’s Costumes also range widely from the appealing- colorful, patterned zoot suits and movie scene regalia to the mundane-many of Indigo’s costumes are ordinary and unflattering. It would also help if an actual period were selected.
All in all a spectacle the sum of whose parts are not larger than the whole.
Photos by Richard Termine Opening: Andrew and Kevin Atherton and the Company
Cirque du Soleil Theatrical presents Paramour Creative Guide/Director- Jean-Francois Bouchard Director/Conceiver-Philippe Decoufle Associate Creative Director/Scene Director & Story- West Hyler Composers: Bob & Bill, Guy Dubuc, Marc Lessard Lyricist/Co-Composer- Andreas Carlsson Lyric Theatre 213 West 42nd Street
Lyricist and Librettist Alan Jay Lerner (1918-1986) won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards. With Frederick Loewe and Burton Lane, he gave us such varied musical theater pieces as Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, Camelot, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, and the iconic My Fair Lady as well as movie musicals Gigi and Royal Wedding. Lerner also wrote the screenplay for An American in Paris. The irascible artist had a well known amphetamine habit, yet managed to have eight wives, provoking one to remark, “Marriage was his way of saying goodbye.”
Well born Lerner met Frederick Loewe at The Lamb’s Club in 1942. Their first big hit was 1947’s highland fantasy Brigadoon. Harvey Granat begins today’s musical selections with a palpably enamored “Almost Like Being in Love” from that show. Special Guest John Cullum comments, “Thank God, this is a talk show. I wouldn’t want to compete with that.”
Three songs from the Fred Astaire/Jane Powell film Royal Wedding follow. “Too Late Now” arrives a wistful, wounded shrug, not believing the relationship is over. “How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Love You When You Know I’ve Been a Liar All My Life?” is delivered in music hall vernacular like yout (youth), trut (truth) and wouldn’t yuz know. “All the World To Me” (the dancing on the ceiling number) is graceful and jaunty. “He paints such a beautiful, lyrical picture,” Granat says. As does the vocalist.
By whom are you influenced when singing in theater,” Granat asks Cullum, “the composer? the lyricist? the director?” “Lyrics,” the performer decisively responds.“They change your personality with every song you sing.”
My Fair Lady, which garnered 2700 performances in 1956, featured Rex Harrison, an actor convinced he couldn’t sing (apparently much like Cullum) and a wet behind the ears, Julie Andrews. We hear a rendition of “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” subtly colored by surprise and a deeply romantic “On the Street Where You Live” during which some of the audience quietly sing. “Sing out!” our host encourages.
At the top of the last 16 bars, Cullum joins in and Granat yields the floor. “When I first came to New York,” the thespian explains, “they always asked whether I had a ballad. I said, yes, On the Street Where You Live.” Again and again he was told Give us the last 16 bars. “I’ve had lots of practice,” he grins.
With “Gigi,” Granat expresses puzzlement, unconsciously wrinkling his brow on ‘desire.’ “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” remains affectionately timeless, though our host points out the lyrics would elicit issues today. Having worked in many mediums, Cullum is asked which he prefers. “I have to admit, there’s nothing like a musical, though I wish I had the voice to sing opera.”
Cullum auditioned to play a knight in 1960’s Camelot starring Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, and Robert Goulet. “All the guys over 6’3” were there to audition and I knew they could sing circles around me…” He got the part, also understudying Roddy McDowall and Burton, becoming friends with the latter whom he fondly recalls as generous with the entire company and scholarly. “Burton really didn’t think acting was important thing to do which broke my heart. I think he was lying.”
Granat then sings “If Ever I Could Leave You” during which each season seems to occur to him before our eyes. Cullum continues Camelot anecdotes with Lerner’s request that he sing Sir Lancelot’s ballad for the lyricist in hopes he might understudy Goulet. “I told him I haven’t got that kind of voice, but he insisted. Afterwards, he said,~ John, you’re absolutely right, you haven’t got the voice.’” Sweetly, self-effacingly related.
In 1965, Cullum stared as Dr. Mark Bruckner opposite Julie Harris’ Daisy Gamble/Melinda in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. He sings the title song beginning with the verse, part of a song, he comments, too often overlooked. Every word is meaningful, every thought appreciated. Gentle long notes originate at the back of the performer’s throat, clearing lips with thoughtfulness and emotional waver.
Just before Lerner died, he withdrew from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera having authored “Masquerade,” but losing his memory due to an undiagnosed brain tumor. He was also working on a musical of My Man Godfrey.
As always, MD/pianist David Lahm makes everything seem rehearsed.
Harvey Granat’s The Songs of Alan Jay Lerner is the last of this season’s entertaining midday concert/talks at the 92 Street Y. Next season begins on September 15 with music and stories about Jerry Herman. October 20, it’s Frank Loesser. November 10, Jule Styne. December 8, Burt Bachrach. Each event will feature a special guest. Each will be at noon at the 92Y on Lexington Avenue.
Nick Payne’s Constellations, (on Broadway in 2015), poetically explored The String Theory of Quantum Physics: In layman’s terms, what happens to everything else when a single aspect of a scenario changes and is it happening simultaneously on another plane? The play’s program specified “Place: The Multiverse” = the juncture? of multiple universes. Still fascinated with questions of free will, time, memory, and the way we function, the prolific playwright/intellectual here takes the human brain as its subject. One again drama is the medium.
Four excellent actors: Geveva Carr, Charlie Cox, Heather Lind, and Morgan Spector play a multitude of characters including psychologists, scientists, patients, a lawyer, a journalist…with turn-on-a-dime American and British accents. The piece, like its predecessor, is episodic, here broken into three larger chapters: ENCODING, STORING, and RETRIEVING, each begun with robotic voguing (by Peter Pucci) and a walk around the circular staging area accompanied by spacey electronic sounds/music. (David Van Tieghem) It’s a kind of a human rondo.
Morgan Spector, Geneva Carr
Identifiable stories play through in fragments. When Albert Einstein died, Princeton pathologist Thomas Harvey, conducting his autopsy (Morgan Spector), had a carpe diem moment and, turning to the icon’s executor, asked whether he might take the brain…which ends up in the trunk of his car before being dissected and studied…to little avail.
Martha (Geneva Carr, whose natural stage presence allows her to morph with focus), the adopted granddaughter of Einstein’s son and a clinical neuropsychologist, is approached by self-serving journalist, Michael (Charlie Cox) with questions of her paternity. Might she, in fact, be Einstein’s illicit daughter? (Not so far-fetched based on evidence.) All she has to do is take a DNA sample from Einstein’s brain to find out. That is, when Michael tracks it down.
Heather Lind, Geneva Carr
The intrepid headline hound convinces Doctor Harvey to accompany him cross country with a piece of the brain in order to see Einstein’s daughter –no love lost there – Evelyn (Carr), and request that sample. They drive. (How is one to airline check a brain fragment?)
Martha is, for the first time, exploring a gay relationship with Patricia (Heather Lind with a butch persona), also an adopted child, who would like her to help a lawyer friend (Spector) with professional testimony in a murder trial.
Anthony (a credibly on-the-verge Spector) is in and out of therapy (including with a compassionate but helpless Martha) and on Dagwood combinations of medication… rendering him impotent. About to embark on his honeymoon, he stops his meds, is fine for several days, then strangles his new bride to death, remembering nothing.
Heather Lind, Charlie Cox
Henry’s (a wonderfully innocent and touching Charlie Cox) amnesiac brain is poorly wired, though whether before or after an operation is unclear. His attention span is three to four thoughts, then everything starts fresh. The patient’s fiancé Margaret (Heather Lind) tries patiently (and palpably) to help, especially wanting him to regain his music, but gives up in despair. Doctors change over time…until Martha appears, triggering a moment of clarity/progress or, perhaps, just in the right place at the right time.
I’m sure I’ve left people and connections out. All four actors are top notch, but this is an impressionistic piece. Emotions are felt only in passing except perhaps those provoked by Henry who appears throughout. The mechanism we call brain retains its secrets.
Director Doug Hughes brings what humanity he can to the passing parade, keeps things moving and characters from becoming static.
Ben Stanton’s Lighting, Scott Pask’s minimal Set and Catherine Zuber’s grey-tone costumes collectively create an ephemeral canvas.
Photos by Joan Marcus Opening: Geneva Carr (back), Morgan Spector, Heather Lind, Charlie Cox
Manhattan Theatre Club presents Incognito by Nick Payne Directed by Doug Hughes City Center Stage 1 151 West 55th Street Through July 10, 2016
While I grant that culture depicted here is relatively unknown to me, I don’t for a minute attribute my opinion of the play’s success to novelty. Author Quiara Alegria Hudes’s detailed, multicultural characterization and unexpected plot lines make the bar setting an apt canvas rather than a cliché. There isn’t a false, pandering, or extra word. The piece is lively, humorous, dramatic and affecting.
Hudes, it should be noted, won a Pulitzer Prize for Water by the Spoonful and wrote the book for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical In the Heights. The latter was directed by Thomas Kail, responsible for both Hamilton and this new work.
Daphne’s North Philly Bar/Lounge is the kind of old fashioned, neighborhood watering hole patronized by family and odd ducks for whom the place is a second home. Sentences begun by one are finished by others, jokes are “in”, history is shared. Owned by its grounded, wry, Puerto-Rican namesake (Vanessa Aspillaga), as is the rundown building housing questionable tenants, Daphne’s welcomes a core of regulars including:
Vanessa Aspillaga and Matt Saldivar
Struggling artist, Pablo (Matt Saldivar), currently a dumpster-diver in service of paintings depicting the discard of people’s lives; Jenn (KK Moggie), a passionate and literally colorful activist with a self avowed ‘Messiah Complex,’; and, Rey (Gordon Joseph Weiss), a middle-aged, hippie motorcyclist who picks up physical labor to support his travels- though completely credible, the least well realized participant. Daphne’s sister Inez (Daphne Rubin-Vega), who married a community-minded, up-and-coming businessman and her husband Acosta (Carlos Gomez) are also omnipresent. These two are economically better off and geographically better situated, yet loyal and generous.
Vanessa Aspillaga and Samira Wiley
When an upstairs apartment is raided by police and DEA who cart off drugs, guns and its inhabitants, the tenants’ 11 year-old daughter, Ruby (Samira Wiley), jumps out a window. She’s found, bruised and cowering, behind the building. Daphne first shelters then reluctantly adopts the emotionally broken girl, but, in essence, Ruby acquires six parents. Over a period of 17 years, framed by the Ruby’s informing us how old she is at the start of each scene, fates, relationships, and some personalities radically alter.
Jenn, whom Ruby identifies as her only honest friend (Jenn has no boundaries), grows increasingly more radical and then unhinged in her attempts to raise awareness about the state of the world. Both Ruby and Daphne develop strong, unforseen bonds with her. Acosta rises in politics eventually yielding to proffered temptations, risking his marriage. Ruby becomes a smart, enthusiastic student, yet her underpinnings are shakier than what’s publicly apparent; she eventually makes a surprising choice. Painful secrets about Daphne and Inez indirectly relate to Ruby. Pablo achieves a kind of fame, yet stays his course. Rey is Rey.
Daphne Rubin-Vega and Vanessa Aspillaga
At an hour forty-five with no intermission, one never feels restless. Director Thomas Kail keeps flow consistent and smooth. Lights dim; evocative piano music by Michel Camilo is heard with such pristine clarity it seems to get inside one (Sound Design – Nevin Steinberg), an efficient swarm of stagehands adjust Donyale Werle’s splendid, weathered Set.
Physical acting adds insight. Pablo is graceful in his skin, while Jenn’s natural eurhythmy seems provoked. Daphne is always aware of gravity. Acosta carries himself with calm confidence. Inez moves in spurts. Ruby is defensive. Ray lolls. Kail serves a cast who knows how to listen, utilizing his staging area with authenticity and creativity. Small business illuminates, the creation of banners and tending to a symbolic plant work particularly well. A parentheses of dancing captivates.
Matt Saldivar, Samira Wiley, Carlos Gomez, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Gordon Joseph Weiss
Costume Design (and, one presumes, wigs) by Toni-Leslie James suit place, people, period, and status. Representation of Pablo’s artfully insouciant combinations and Jenn’s various off-the-wall ensembles is inspired.
Vanessa Aspillaga’s Daphne bears a palpable undercurrent of emotion and power that serves as ballast. When she briefly erupts later in the piece, disclosure has all the more effect.
KK Moggie first manifests Jenn as an insubstantial, well meaning spirit, then shepherds her evolution into someone obsessed. The actress might be a bit more frightening.
Carlos Gomez (Acosta) exudes sympathetic warmth and masculinity. Daphne Rubin-Vega (Inez), a thoroughly appealing Matt Saldivar (Pablo), and Gordon Joseph Weiss (Rey) feel completely genuine.
Samira Wiley’s Ruby is always sure the earth will open up beneath her feet. Wisely the actress delivers an unaffected 11 year-old. As the character grows to maturity, Wiley increasingly lets her inhabit her skin. This includes subtle signs of increased alcohol use and volatility. Well performed.
Photos by Joan Marcus Opening: Gordon Joseph Weiss, Matt Saldivar, KK Moggie, Samira Wiley
Signature Theatre presents Daphne’s Dive by Quiara Alegria Hudes Directed by Thomas Kail Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre in The Pershing Square Signature Center 480 West 42nd Street Through June 12, 2016
Simon Stephens, winner of the 2015 Tony Award for Best Play, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, wrote Harper Regan some five years prior. The earlier effort describes relocated Manchester people of a class with whom the playwright was raised. Attitudes are authentic to geography and culture as well as the author’s imaginative characterization – i.e. everyone feels true. Dialogue is wonderful. Alas, individual scenes and included exposition is sometimes superfluous. Narrative sorely needs editing. Aside from this, the T. Schreiber production is excellent on all fronts.
In essence, this is a story of halting self discovery, an unwitting pilgrimage which stimulates change in outlook.
Maeve Yore and Jerry Topitzer
Harper (Maeve Yore), her genial husband Seth (effectively tenuous Richard Stables), both in their early forties, and their academically smart, yet Goth teenage daughter, Sarah (well calibrated Lauren Capkanis), have recently moved here. All are unsettled.
When her beloved father falls into a diabetic coma, Harper naturally requests a few days off from an administrative job she’s executed faultlessly since arrival. Her obtuse, self-serving boss, Elwood Barnes (infuriatingly real Jerry Topitzer), refuses to let her go on penalty of dismissal. Husband Seth is unemployed, perhaps unemployable, due to his inclusion on a national list of sexual offenders as a pedophile, charges Harper denies. She’s her family’s sole support. Responsibility sits heavy.
Lauren Capkanis; Richard Stables
Next thing we know, Harper’s at the hospital in Stockport, having left home telling no one where she’s going. Doctor? Nurse? Justine (an aptly insensitive Mega Grace) sits with the bereaved, but like many characters in this play, ends up rambling on about her own life.
Having missed the opportunity to tell her father she loved him, alienated from a mother (Margo Goodman) who apparently believed Seth guilty, causing a family rift, Harper is at loose ends in her old home town.
Exorcism of sorrow and frustration takes the form of almost picking up the somewhat younger Micky Nestor (a credible Ryan Johnston) in a bar, a gesture of unexpected violence, and having a trist with middle-aged stranger at a hotel. (Both of these encounters are deftly penned.) And finally, confronting her mother.
By the time Harper goes back home, she’s altered.
The play is sprinkled with politics and sexual innuendo, some of it seemingly without reason. Two young Arabs, Tobias (a first rate Mike Phillip Gomez), whom Harper meets on an embankment and with whom there’s palpable attraction and Mahesh (Vick Krishna), an assistant contractor working with her stepfather (John Fennessy) appear as reflections of time and place. At least three characters express vehement bigotry. Elwood Barnes inappropriately compliments his employee and refers to Harper’s daughter almost licking his lips, Harper’s sexual proclivity is variously tempted and indulged, a late moment of doubt about Seth’s innocence is unnerving.
Maeve Yore and Mike Phillips Gomez
Maeve Yore (Harper Regan) is flat out terrific. There isn’t a moment we don’t thoroughly believe every word and move, some of which are neither logical nor anticipated. Yore’s focus/stage presence makes even silence compelling. Emotions and thoughts are practically visible. Yore may be worth the play.
With great attention to detail, Director Terry Schreiber gives every character individual attributes. Seth’s immensely physical realization works splendidly for a man beneath whom the earth has shifted. Conversations are beautifully paced allowing for awkwardness and/or reflection. Stage use is organic and skillful.
Dialogue Coach Page Clements does a crackerjack job.
Minimal Set is cleverly conceived by George Allison using mostly blocks and boards.
Photo of Ryan Johnston & Maeve Yore at the bar- Gili Getz All other Photos- Remy
Opening: Maeve Yore
T. Schreiber Studio for Theatre & Film presents Harper Regan by Simon Stephens Directed by Terry Schreiber The Gloria Maddox Theatre 151 West 26th Street 7th Floor Through June 4, 2016
