Good Grief

D

It took me less than 30 seconds to take a dislike to the new play at Vineyard Theatre by Nigerian-American playwright Ngozi Anyanwu (The Homecoming Queen), who also stars. Before the play begins, thick stage fog rolls over the audience in the front rows for no apparent reason. The play’s first words are accompanied by bright lights the actors shine in people’s eyes. As the stage lights go up, we see a two-story industrial-like metal set by Jason Ardizzone-West with sliding perforated panels and fluorescent lamps that light up when characters kiss. With all these distractions, this modest memory play about a young woman immobilized by grief almost gets lost in the shuffle. Nkechi (Ms. Anyanwu) lives in Bucks County, PA with her immigrant parents Papa (Oberon K.A. Adjepong; The Homecoming Queen) and NeNe (Patrice Johnson Chevannes; The Homecoming Queen) and Bro (Nnamdi Asomugha; “Crown Heights”), the brother who has gone homeboy. We also meet two mothers, both played by Lisa Ramirez. When Nkechi’s biracial boyfriend MJ (Ian Quinlan; The Lion King) suddenly dies, she drops out of med school and retires to her room. Not even a fling with her Waspy high school crush JD (Hunter Parrish; Spring Awakening, "Weeds") gives her solace. The acting is fine except that Ms. Chevannes’s thick accent is not easy to decipher. The story is told in a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards that are sometimes hard to place in time. Ancient mythology is also drawn into the mix; Andy Jean’s (Rags Parkland) costumes for that scene are attractive. Fluorescent lights dominate the final image. Clearly, director Awoye Timpo (The Homecoming Queen) is not someone who believes less is more. For me, the excesses of the production overwhelmed this slight play. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

The Thanksgiving Play

C+

If the thought of a Saturday Night Live sketch that lasts almost an hour and a half appeals to you, you will enjoy this new play by Larissa FastHorse now at Playwrights Horizons. Logan (Jennnifer Bareilles; The Studio System), a neurotic drama teacher already in trouble with parents over her last production, The Iceman Cometh with 15-year old actors, has cobbled together enough grant money from organizations promoting noble causes to produce and direct a 45-minute play for an elementary school audience, celebrating Native American Heritage Month. The three actors she has recruited to “devise” the play are Jaxton (Greg Keller; The Amateurs, Belleville), her slacker street-performer boyfriend; Caden (Jeffrey Bean; Bells Are Ringing), a nerdy elementary teacher with a passion for historically accurate playwriting; and Alicia (Margo Seibert; Rocky), a sexy but not very bright Hollywood starlet, hired under the mistaken impression that she is Native American. Before the play opens and at a few points during, the actors perform delightfully awful Thanksgiving songs and short skits suggested as appropriate for young audiences. The bulk of the play portrays their first and possibly only rehearsal, a virtual playbook of political correctness among the “woke” that leads to increasingly absurd situations as they tie themselves in knots trying to avoid offending anyone. The characters may be stereotypes but they are marvelously realized by the four actors. The satire is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but there are some hilarious moments. A few theatrical “in” jokes are very funny. What disappointed me was that I thought a Native American playwright would offer some original insights on our November holiday that I didn’t find. I felt that the play might just as easily have been the work of a team of privileged white SNL writers. Even though I am a fan of broad satire, the play ran too long to sustain my interest. The set by Wilson Chin (Cost of Living, The Jammer) accurately recreates a high school drama classroom. The costumes by Tilly Grimes (The Government Inspector) are spot-on. Despite the best efforts of director Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Hand to God, Bernhardt/Hamlet), the play loses energy before it’s over. Running time: 85 minutes, no intermission.

Daniel's Husband

C+

It would be easy to dismiss Michael McKeever’s (Clark Gable Slept Here) play as the theatrical equivalent of a gay Lifetime movie, but it was sufficiently well-received during its recent run at Primary Stages that it has been brought back for an encore run at the Westside Theatre. Architect Daniel (Ryan Spahn; Summer and Smoke, Gloria) and gay pulp fiction author Mitchell (Matthew Montelongo; A View from the Bridge, The Ritz) are entertaining Mitchell’s older literary agent Barry (Lou Liberatore; Burn This, As Is) and his latest boy-toy Trip (Leland Wheeler), a home health care aide. Over after-dinner drinks, Trip innocently asks why Daniel and Mitchell, who have been together seven years, have not married. His question sets off a vehement tirade by Mitchell against marriage, gay assimilation and conformity. Daniel would like to marry, but Mitchell is adamant and their disagreement is a sore spot in their otherwise harmonious relationship. Another source of unease is the impending arrival of Daniel’s overbearing mother Lydia (Anna Holbrook; Raising Jo), whose visits are a cross for Daniel to bear. When catastrophe strikes, Mitchell has to pay a high price for his choices. Montelongo makes the most of this climactic moment. Brian Prather’s (Freud’s Last Session) midcentury modern living room set befits an architect. Gregory Gale’s (Rock of Ages) costumes suit their characters well. Joe Brancato’s (The Life & Blues of Bessie Smith) direction is unobtrusive. While this cautionary tale is both manipulative and predictable, it is elevated by good actors who make the characters and relationships convincing and by high production values. Running time: 95 minutes, no intermission.

The Niceties

A-

It would be hard to find a timelier, more relevant play around town than Eleanor Burgess’s ironically titled drama now at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage II at City Center. In a program note, the author states that she is intrigued by situations “when smart, well-meaning people, with great values and the best intentions, fundamentally can’t agree on the right way to behave.” Based on an incident at Yale in 2015, the two-character play explores the escalating conflict between Zoe (Jordan Boatman), a bright African-American student and her well-regarded professor Janine (Lisa Banes; Arcadia, Isn’t It Romantic). The two meet during office hours to discuss the term paper that Zoe has written for a course in Comparative Revolution. After pointing out a few grammatical and stylistic errors, Janine proceeds to attack Zoe’s thesis that slavery played an important role in preventing the American Revolution from becoming a radical one. After much back and forth, Janine challenges Zoe to find more impressive documentation than internet websites to back up her thesis. She offers Zoe more time to do so, but activist Zoe is more committed to upcoming protests than to her coursework. Their escalating arguments over racism, white privilege, biased curricula and basic philosophies lead to an outburst that has serious consequences for both of them. During the second act, they meet once more to see if they can find common ground to take action that might mitigate the damage that has been done. We do not get the comfort of an easy answer. The play is all the more poignant in that it is set in pre-election 2016, before we fully realized the depth of the chasms dividing the country. The play is not without its flaws: at first the author comes dangerously close to making Janine a caricature, but she partially redeems this with some humanizing information later on. I also would have liked to know more about Zoe’s background. The arguments occasionally become repetitious, but the topics are so timely and important that I didn’t mind. Some have compared the play to Oleanna, which it does resemble in structure, but the issues this play raises make Mamet’s play look trivial by comparison. Both actors are very strong. The set by Cameron Anderson (The Language of Trees) looks convincingly like a book-cluttered office on an Ivy campus. Kara Harmon’s (Dot) costumes are apt. Kimberly Senior’s (Disgraced) direction keeps things moving forward briskly. If you see it, I guarantee you will have lots to talk about afterwards. Running time: one hour 50 minutes, including intermission.

Days of Rage

B-

The title of Steven Levenson’s (Significant Other, Dear Evan Hansen) new play now in previews at Second Stage refers less to the three-day violent confrontation between anti-war activists and Chicago police in October 1969 than to the chaotic week preceding it at a protestors’ collective occupying a dilapidated house in an upstate New York college town. Three people presently live there: handsome Spence (Mike Faist; Dear Evan Hansen) and plain Jenny (Laura Patten; The Wolves), who have been best friends and sometimes a bit more since childhood, and the sexy Quinn (Australian actor Odessa Young), who is currently Spence’s favored bed partner. We learn that two men had left the collective after an argument over strategies. Two newcomers enter the circle: Peggy (Tavi Gevinson; This Is Your Youth, The Crucible), an enigmatic girl who begs to move in and offers them the money they need to get to Chicago, and Hal (J. Alphonse Nicholson; Paradise Blue), an African-American Sears employee whom Jenny takes a shine to. The group has had little success raising money or recruiting people to join them for the trip to Chicago. There is resentment against Spence for allowing Peggy to move in and against Jenny for starting a relationship with an outsider. We observe the collective’s group process at work. For the first third of the play, it is unclear whether anything more serious than who is sleeping with whom is at stake and whether the collective members are anything more than feckless idealists. In due time we get answers. An increasing sense of paranoia takes hold when they hear bad news about their ex-housemates and suspect that the house is being watched. A few surprises are in store. In a built-in epilogue, we learn the future course of their lives. It’s a story that starts slow but builds up steam as it progresses. The young actors are very good. I wish we received more back story on each character. My essential problem with the play is that I could not figure out the playwright’s point of view. I didn’t know whether his attitude toward the characters was satirical, cautionary or simply observational. I found it entertaining, increasingly involving but not very informative. The production is helped by a great set by Louisa Thompson (In the Blood) with a cross-section of a shabby cluttered house that rolls backwards when performing space is needed downstage. The costumes by Paloma Young (Peter and the Starcatcher) suit their characters very well. Trip Cullman’s (Lobby Hero, Yen) direction is assured. If you plan to see it, I suggest a quick look at “Days of Rage” on Wikipedia before you go. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

The Waverly Gallery

C

Buoyed by the success of the revivals of This Is Our Youth and Lobby Hero, the powers that be thought it would be a good idea to bring back Kenneth Lonergan’s semi-autobiographical 2000 memory play about a dementia-addled octogenarian and the effects of her illness on her loving but frazzled family. Eileen Heckart’s powerful performance in the central role of Gladys made the original production a must-see event, even though the play was not one of Lonergan’s stronger efforts. I regret to say that Elaine May (California Suite, Luv) is no match for Ms. Heckart. The limited range of her facial expression weakens her performance and, therefore, the play itself. The actors playing her family are all strong. For me, the main reason to attend is to see the wonderful Joan Allen (Burn This, The Heidi Chronicles) onstage again, playing her daughter Ellen. David Cromer (Our Town) captures the well-meaning but clumsy behavior of Ellen’s second husband Howard. Lucas Hedges (Yen), in his Broadway debut, plays the long-suffering grandson whose apartment is just down the hall from Gladys’s and who therefore bears the brunt of dealing with her decline. He has the additional burden of narrating the play. A not very well-integrated subplot involves a naive, unsuccessful artist, Don (Michael Cera; Lobby Hero), just arrived in New York, whom Gladys befriends and installs in the back room of her failing Greenwich Village gallery. Even though Gladys fulfills his dream of a one-man show, he becomes disillusioned with life in New York. On the one hand, Cera avoids most of his usual annoying mannerisms; on the other, he does not create a very vivid character. I found it uncomfortable to laugh at Gladys’s behavior, knowing its source and its eventual outcome. There was no conflict within the family how to take care of Gladys and little insight provided about her illness or the best way to mitigate its effects. Perhaps it was cathartic for the author to describe her decline, but, in my opinion, there is little payoff for the audience. Without a really mesmerizing Gladys, the play’s weaknesses become more apparent. David Zinn’s (The Humans) set presents four distinct locations that are revealed behind a brick-wall front curtain. Old film clips of New York are projected on the wall between scenes. Perhaps director Lila Neugebauer (The Antipodes, At Home at the Zoo) could have found more depth in the play; perhaps not. Running time: two hours ten minutes including intermission.

Plot Points in Our Sexual Development

D

Miranda Rose Hall’s new play about gender fluidity, now at LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater, is so short (58 minutes) that my Metrocard transfer was still valid for the trip home. It may have been less than an hour, but it was so talky and tedious that it seemed much longer. When the play opens, Theo (Jax Jackson; Hir) and Cecily (Marianne Rendon; Lazarus) take seats facing the audience at opposite ends of the darkened stage. For the first twenty minutes, we get alternating monologues of episodes from their respective psychosexual histories. For the next twenty minutes, the stage lights come up, the actors move their chairs so they are facing each other and start to acknowledge each other’s presence. For the final third, they engage in an escalating argument about meeting each other’s sexual needs. A promotional video for the production gives away the spoiler, but I will merely say that all is not as it first seems. The concept is interesting, but the play seemed a work in progress, more confusing than elucidating, more theoretical than dramatic. Margot Bordelon (Too Heavy for Your Pocket) directed.

Waitress

C+

It took me 2 1/2 years, but I finally got around to seeing this slick musical adaptation of Adrienne Shelly’s 2007 film, with music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles and a book by Jessie Nelson. With one exception, the entire cast has changed since the show opened. My reason for seeing it now was to catch the Broadway debut of the delightful Nicolette Robinson (Invisible Thread, Brooklynite) as Jenna. The roles of Jenna’s sidekicks have been recast well with NaTasha Yvette Williams (Chicago) as the brash Becky and Lenne Klingman as the shy Dawn. Benny Elledge is their boss Cal, Ben Thompson (Matilda) is Jenna’s abusive husband Earl and Al Roker (yes, that one) is the owner of Joe’s Pie Diner. Alex Wyse (Spring Awakening) is a scene stealer as Ogie, Dawn’s persistent suitor. Drew Gehling (Jersey Boys), the sole holdover from the original cast, is both goofy and ardent as Dr. Pomatter. The book offers no surprises other than its casual acceptance of adultery. The running pie-baking motif becomes tiresome quickly. The music is pleasant, but it is often difficult to make out the lyrics because the voices are harshly overamplified. The musicians, although only six in number, sound so loud that they occasionally threaten to drown out the singers. With today’s advanced technologies, these problems should not be hard to solve. The scenic design by Scott Pask (The Book of Mormon) is both attractive and flexible and the costumes by Suttirat Anne Larlarb (Of Mice and Men) are appropriate. Diane Paulus’s (Pippin) direction is relatively restrained. The show is only moderately entertaining, but apparently that’s enough to have kept it running this long. Running time: two hours 35 minutes, including intermission.

Usual Girls

C

At the risk of being branded a sexist, I think that Ming Peiffer’s new play at Roundabout Underground’s Black Box Theatre holds greater appeal for women than for men. It charts the course of female sexuality, as lived by Kyeoung, a Korean-American girl, from prepubescence to early adulthood. The enthusiastic response several scenes evoked from female audience members suggests that the playwright got many things right. From third-grade playground antics to a pajama party for girls on the verge of puberty to mean girls acting out in high school to a druggy collegiate visit to New York on to a personal #MeToo story and quotidian indignities, Kyeoung (Midori Francis; The Wolves) does not have it easy. It was unclear to me whether her shunning was due solely to racism or also to her personality. Her sometime friends Anna (Abby Corrigan), Lindsay (Nicole Rodenburg; The Antipodes), Marina (Ali Rose Dachis; Fish in the Dark), Sasha (Sofia Black-D’Elia) and a sorority sister (Ryann Redmond; Escape to Margaritaville) are nicely differentiated. We also meet Rory (Raviv Ullman; Russian Transport), a boy who enjoys taunting her, and her father (Karl Kenzler; Fiddler on the Roof), a bitter drunk who showed her his porno magazines at a tender age. Last but by no means least is the wonderful Jennifer Lim (Chinglish) playing an older version of Kyeoung. While I rarely enjoy watching adults portray children, I thought these energetic actors carried it off well. Be forewarned that the language is often explicit and there is considerable nudity. I’m not a prude, but watching a girl’s first pubic shave is not my idea of entertainment. Kyeoung’s difficulty in remembering the details of her rape provides an eerie echo of Dr. Blasey Ford’s recent testimony. There are many lively moments but somehow the result seems less than the sum of its parts. The simple set by Arnulfo Maldonado (Bobby Clearly) is quite functional. The costumes by Asta Bennie Hostetter (Miles for Mary) are age-appropriate to each scene. Tyne Rafaeli’s (I Was Most Alive with You) direction is assured. Running time: one hour 40 minutes; no intermission.

Mother of the Maid

B-

As a showcase for the talents of the marvelous Glen Close (The Real Thing, Sunset Boulevard), Jane Anderson’s (Looking for Normal, “The Wife”) play at the Public Theater is an unqualified success. Beyond that, its merits are less clear. Your reaction to it may depend on whether you think the world needs yet another play about Joan of Arc, albeit one told from the viewpoint of her mother. The Arcs, as portrayed by Anderson, are a hardworking peasant family. Jacques (Dermot Crowley; The Weir, Translations) is gruff and dislikes challenges to his authority. Isabelle (Ms. Close) is a no-nonsense mother who tries hard to meet the challenge of raising their rebellious teen-aged daughter Joan (Grace Van Patten; The Whirligig), especially when she starts having saintly visions. Joan’s brother Pierre (Andrew Hovelson; Lucky Guy, The Father) repeatedly demonstrates that he lacks his sister’s strength of character. Their priest, Father Gilbert (Daniel Pearce; Machinal, Passion Play), discounts Joan’s visions until she is embraced by the French court. A well-meaning but nameless Lady of the Court (Kate Jennings Grant; The Lyons, Noises Off) is kind to Joan and her family but is unable to avoid lapsing into patronizing mode. Her servant Monique (Olivia Gilliatt; CasablancaBox) is basically superfluous to the story. The first act contains considerable humor, occasionally resembling a family sitcom. The second act darkens and offers powerful monologues for each parent. While it is interesting to see events from a different point of view, the play offers no new insights. The device of having a character narrate, referring to oneself in the third person, seemed awkward. The actors are all fine, with Ms. Close more than fine. I only wish she had not been given makeup that made her appear almost grotesque. The set design by John Lee Beatty (Sweat, The Water Engine) is efficient and understated. Jane Greenwood’s (The Little Foxes) costumes are apt, especially the lavish gowns for Ms. Grant. The direction by Matthew Penn (The Beauty Queen of Leenane) is smooth. While I found the play a bit wobbly in its tone, I was grateful for the opportunity to see Ms. Close up close. Running time: two hours ten minutes including intermission.

The Nap

D

Since I thoroughly enjoyed Richard Bean’s hilarious One Man, Two Guvnors, I was looking forward to this play at Manhattan Theatre Club even though I was unfamiliar with and uninterested in its focus — snooker, a variety of billiards popular in England. Allegedly a comedy-thriller, it comes up short on both laughs and thrills. Dylan Spokes (Ben Schnetzer; Sticks and Bones) is a working-class bloke from Sheffield who has a chance to win the World Championship tournament which is conveniently being held in his home town. Bobby Spokes (John Ellison Conlee; Murder Ballad, The Madrid) is his father, an ex-con drug dealer who has trouble with math and movie titles. Dylan is alienated from his mother Stella (Johanna Day; Sweat, Proof), a grifter who is currently selling fake handicap parking permits. The shady Waxy Bush (Alexandra Billings), Dylan’s sponsor and Stella’s lover before her gender change, rivals Mrs. Malaprop with her fractured vocabulary.  Tony DanLino (Max Gordon Moore; Saint Joan, Describe the Night) is Dylan’s flashy manager with a taste for pastel suits. Danny Killeen (Thomas Jay Ryan; The Crucible, 10 out of 12) is Stella’s smelly current boyfriend. Shortly before the tournament, Dylan is visited by Mohammad Butt (Bhavesh Patel; Present Laughter, Indian Ink), an official with the snooker authority, and Eleanor Lavery (Heather Lind; Incognito, Of Good Stock), an attractive police officer, who warn him about suspicious betting activity. Subsequently, Dylan must face a painful choice between throwing a game or jeopardizing the life of a loved one. This setup takes up the very long first act, which ends on a jarring note. The second and livelier act has many reveals and not one but two scenes of snooker with Dylan against Abdul Fattah and Baghawi Quereshi (both played by real-life champion Ahmed Aly Elsayed). An overhead view of the snooker play is projected on a large screen. The author has allegedly written two endings, depending on who wins. On the night I attended, Dylan won. The characters are little more than one-note tics and their interactions just aren’t that funny. The romantic subplot is half-hearted. At no point does the play even remotely approach the inspired slapstick farce of Bean’s earlier play. The direction by Daniel Sullivan (The Little Foxes, Good People) seemed a bit listless. David Rockwell’s (She Loves Me, Lobby Hero) set is a transforming wonder and Kaye Voyce’s (After the Blast, Mary Page Marlowe) costumes go a long way to defining the characters. Once again MTC has lavished first-rate production values on second-rate material. I was very disappointed. Running time: two hours 15 minutes including intermission.

Oklahoma!

Here's what I had to say about Daniel Fish's version when I saw it at Bard three years ago. The essentials of the production and much of the cast (Daunno, Davis, Testa and Vaill) are the same.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Oklahoma! — at Bard Summerscape

A-

Director Daniel Fish’s concept for this production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first collaboration is highly original. He has reduced the cast to ten and, with new musical arrangements by Daniel Kluger, cut the musicians to a band of six that includes a mandolin, a banjo, an accordion and a pedal steel guitar. The audience is seated at two tiers of long tables that surround the rectangular space holding  the actors and musicians. On the tables are crockpots of chili that will be served along with cornbread and lemonade at intermission. Colorful foil ribbons hang from the ceiling. Not to be overlooked are the racks of rifles that completely cover one wall. The actors sit on folding chairs inside the rectangle when not performing and occasionally sit on or jump on tables and race around the aisles. Clearly, this is not your grandparents’ “Oklahoma!” Its immersive nature reminded me of the staging of “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.” The only actor’s name I recognized was Mary Testa, who makes a fine Aunt Eller. Curly is played by Damon Daunno, who looks like a pop star, plays a mean guitar, but is a bit insecure vocally. Amber Gray is a fine Laurey. James Patrick Davis is solid as Will Parker. Allison Strong seemed a bit tepid as Ado Annie. Benj Mirman resists the urge to unduly caricature Ali Hakim. Patrick Vaill is a complex, almost sympathetic Jud. There is much to admire. The scene in the smokehouse begins in total darkness and is then augmented by huge video projections of Jud and Curly in tight closeup. On the minus side, instead of the famous dream ballet to end the first act, we get a strange musical pastiche at the beginning of the second act that is meant to represent Laurey’s dream. It didn’t work for me. My only strong objection is to a drastic revision of the book that occurs a few moments before the end. The final confrontation between Curly and Jud has been completely changed in a manner that casts a new, rather sinister light on everything that has preceded it. I must confess that I am surprised that the powers that control Rodgers and Hammerstein productions allowed it. It was not enough to spoil my appreciation for an otherwise thoroughly engaging show. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including intermission.

Betty's Summer Vacation

C-

One of my long-time theatrical regrets is that I missed Christopher Durang’s outrageous comedy when it ran at Playwrights Horizons in 1999. It gave a boost to Durang’s then-sagging career and won an Obie for Kristine Nielsen. I was therefore happy to learn that a group I had never heard of, The Onomatopoiea Theatre Company, was giving it an Equity-approved showcase at the Gene Frankel Theater. In what could politely be called a shoestring production, we get the bare bones of Durang’s comedy. His most original idea is to give the play its own laugh track, audible to the characters, which graduates from laughs to comments to ever more insistent demands. (I wonder whether this device was an inspiration for Jackie Sibblies Drury’s recent Fairview at SoHo Rep.) The four guests gathered at a summer rental in the Hamptons are a motley crew: Betty (Holly Kay Benedict), who deliberately seems quite ordinary; her motor-mouthed friend Trudy (Tori Pence); the reclusive Keith (Jake Minter) who arrives with a shovel and a mysterious hatbox; and the priapic Buck (Thadeus Kevin Brown) who needs sex 20 times a day. We also meet the flamboyant landlady, Mrs. Seizmagraff (Kimberly Kay) and Mr. Vanislaw (Samuel Shurtleff), the homeless man she brings home. Last but not least are the voices (Orlando Rodriguez, Rachel Freedman and Jim DiMunno), the startling effect of whose appearance is diminished by the production’s limited resources. The wacky plot includes many dated references, e.g. Lorena Bobbitt and the Menendez brothers, but the point that we are addicted to the media is still all too relevant today. In what was probably the climax of the second act (the intermission has been scratched, probably wisely, in this version), Mrs. Seizmagraff performs an episode of Court TV, playing all the roles. Ms. Kay is fine but no match for what my imagination thought Kristine Nielsen must have done with the scene. The other actors were competent but would have benefited from sharper direction from Thomas R. Gordon. Braden Hooter’s set is modest in the extreme. Al Malonga’s costumes for the voices are a hoot. My overall reaction to the evening was disappointment. For a long time, I had wished that someone would revive this play. I guess the message is: be careful what you wish for. Running time: one hour 45 minutes; no intermission.

Lifespan of a Fact

A-

The Broadway season just got a lot brighter with the arrival of this star-studded comedy at Studio 54. With three stars — Daniel Radcliffe (Equus, The Cripple of Inishmaan), Cherry Jones (The Glass Menagerie, The Heiress) and Bobby Cannavale (The Hairy Ape, The Motherf**ker with the Hat) — any of whom alone would be reason enough to see the play, and a plot that is both funny and intelligent, it is cause for celebration. Based on a book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal which was in turn based on an essay written by D’Agata and fact-checked by Fingal, it explores the difference between facts and artistic truth and the distinction between essayist and journalist. That may not sound like promising material for a comedy, but the playwrights — Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell — (why it took three writers, I cannot imagine) have embellished the story in very entertaining ways. They have added the character of Emily (Jones), the magazine editor, to negotiate the chasm between John (Cannavale) and Jim (Radcliffe) and ginned up the pressure by condensing a 5-year battle to 5 days. All three roles are juicy and the actors play them to the hilt. In addition to the laughs, there is plenty of food for thought — the importance of getting things right in the age of fake news and relentless social media, the forces threatening print media, and differing concepts of accuracy and truth. There is some loss of energy during the last quarter-hour that stands out because the play is so energetic until that point. Additionally, we don’t learn very much about the characters, particularly about Emily. A few narrative threads get dropped. None of these flaws seriously diminished my enjoyment. A notable fact about this production is that it is the first on Broadway with an all-female design team —Mimi Lien (set; Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812), Linda Cho (costumes; Anastasia), Jen Schriever (lighting; Eclipsed), Palmer Heffernan (original music and sound design; Collective Rage) and Lucy Mackinnon (projections; After the Blast). The sleek opening set morphs into something quite different. The costumes were appropriate to the characters. Leigh Silverman’s (Violet, Chinglish) direction is unfussy. It was a very enjoyable 90 minutes.