Sanctuary City

C

Over a year and a half has passed since I last set foot in a theater. My exile ended today with a visit to the Lucille Lortel Theatre for New York Theatre Festival’s production of Martyna Majok’s Sanctuary City. I felt a mixture of eagerness and anxiety when I arrived at the theater. There were two lines, one for people with tickets in hand or on their phone and the other for will-call. I showed my ID, Excelsior Pass and ticket and found my seat. Even allowing for deliberately leaving empty seats between theatergoers, the size of the audience was far from the capacity. The usher patrolled the house reminding people to keep their masks on properly.

My expectations were rather high since I had liked Majok’s Cost of Living a lot and had found her immigrant drama queens flawed but interesting. Once again she has turned to the immigrant community for her subject. This time the focus is on two Latinx “dreamers” in Newark who are 17 when the play begins shortly after 9/11. I was moderately taken aback that the two leading characters were identified only as B and G. The benefit of depriving them of first names was not apparent to me. B (Jasai Chase-Owens; The Tempest and A MIdsummer Night’s Dream at the Public) is a bright hard-working young man whose mother decides to return to her homeland, leaving him alone in Newark. G (Sharlene Cruz; Red Bull/Hunter’s Mac Beth), a friend since third grade, has a mother who has brought home a series of abusive boyfriends who sometimes have included G in their abuse. She has often “crashed” with B for safety. Their sleeping together remains chaste, which should set off alarm bells for what follows. Just before G turns 18, she becomes an American citizen by virtue of her mother’s naturalization. To save B from a bleak future, G offers to marry him so he too can become a citizen. They rehearse answering the immigration officer’s likely questions to authenticate a marriage, Without clinching the deal, G goes off to Boston on a scholarship. Up to that point, the play has been highly stylized, with sentences and even fragments of sentences being repeated either with or without variation. Short scenes are repeated out of sequence for no apparent reason. I did not feel that the stylization enhanced the material. The style of the play becomes much more naturalistic when it jumps ahead almost four years. G has returned from Boston on a school break. B is strangely hostile to her. We then meet the third character, Henry (Austin Smith; Hamilton, An Octoroon), whose presence gives us new information about B. The rest of the play is mainly a contest between G and Henry to win B’s exclusive company. I found the story more than a little implausible. Specifically, I could not believe that G could have been so blind to B’s nature. I had trouble understanding what motivated her. All three actors are attractive and do justice to their roles. The abrupt shift in style midway through the play puzzled me. Rebecca Frecknell, Associate Director of London’s Almeida Theatre, is listed as director, but Caitlin Sullivan (Hundred Days at NYTW) is credited as Remount Director. The set by Tom Scutt consists mainly of a bare elevated platform; his costumes did not draw attention. Finally, I feel that the title is a misnomer. What is commonly understood by "sanctuary city" has almost nothing to do with the play.

While it was a pleasure to be back in a theater, I am sorry that the occasion was a bit of a disappointment. Running time: 100 minutes, no intermission.

Socrates

C+

Playwright Tim Blake Nelson (The Grey Zone, Eye of God) is to be admired for attempting to present the Big Three of Greek philosophy as living, breathing, contentious human beings rather than ideas on a page. In a framing device, we first encounter Plato (Teagle F. Bougere; The Crucible; Is God Is) and a boy (Niall Cunningham; TV: “Life in Pieces”), clearly Aristotle, who have just met and are considering whether to begin an ongoing teacher/student relationship. To answer the young man’s question of why he should want to study in the city that killed Socrates, Plato gives an account of the circumstances that led to that outcome. That account, which enlists a cast of fifteen men and one woman, forms the remainder of the play. Nelson cleverly incorporates portions of the Dialogues into the script and uses Socratic method to illustrate how Socrates’s relentless questioning could be as annoying as it was instructive. The play’s strongest suit is Michael Stuhlbarg (The Pillowman, Voysey Inheritance) in the title role; the opportunity to see him in action is reason enough to attend. He is supported by a fine cast that includes David Aaron Baker (Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them) as Anytus, Robert Joy (Girl from the North Country, Side Show) as Crito as well as Meletus the Elder, and Austin Smith (How To Transcend a Happy Marriage) as Alcibiades and Simmius. Director Doug Hughes (Junk, The City of Conversation) skillfully manages the large ensemble. While several scenes are quite effective, others are repetitious and run on too long. I could have done with less shouting too. Xanthippe’s (Miriam A. Hyman; Richard III) extended monologue before her husband’s death is powerful. The death scene itself is excruciatingly lengthy; clearly Nelson does not subscribe to the idea that less is more. The somber set design by Scott Pask (The Book of Mormon, The Band’s Visit) fills the walls of the stage and the auditorium with inscriptions in Greek. The onstage inscribed panels occasionally open to reveal another setting beneath. Catherine Zuber’s (My Fair Lady, The King and I) costumes accurately reflect the period. In my opinion, the first act is greatly in need of a trim. I found my mind wandering and checked my watch more than once. Except for the seemingly endless death scene, the second act was tighter. The occasional attempts to show the play’s relevance to our current situation seemed a bit clumsy. I was grateful for the opportunity to see a play with a serious theme starring a marvelous actor, but I thought it offered too much of a good thing. Running time: three hours including intermission.

How To Transcend a Happy Marriage

B-

In case the bird-headed huntress featured on James McMullan’s wonderful poster for Sarah Ruhl’s new play at Lincoln Center Theater is insufficient warning to expect something unusual, the dead goat hanging upside down over the living room set should surely do the job. An attractive young woman removes it from the hook and carries it off before the play proper begins. A fortyish couple, George (Marisa Tomei) [was it really necessary for the playwright to name the female lead George?] and Paul (Oscar Metwally) are having dinner at the suburban home of their closest friends, Jane (Robin Weigert) and Michael (Brian Hutchison). Jane mentions Pip (Lena Hall), a temp in her office who is both polyamorous and hunts her own meat. They are all intrigued and decide to invite Pip and her two live-in lovers, Freddie (David McElwee) and David (Austin Smith) for a New Year’s Eve party. The party proceeds rather well as they discover such common interests as Pythagoras and Shakespeare. They move on to a karaoke session that spins out of control. Their revels are interrupted by the untimely arrival home of the hosts’ 16-year-old daughter Jenna (Naian Gonzalez Norvind.) The dialogue is smart, funny and sexy, the actors have achieved a fine ensemble and the direction is seamless, once again demonstrating how well-attuned Rebecca Taichman (The Oldest Boy) is to Ruhl’s sensibility. The set design by David Zine and costumes by Susan Hilferty are first-rate. While the first act is nearly perfect, the play has serious second-act problems. An attempt by Pip to teach George to hunt deer has unfortunate consequences. In the scene that follows, there is a sudden introduction of possibly magical events, which, to me, weakens rather than strengthens the play. Freddie and David become mere plot contrivances. Worst of all, we are forced to question or even invalidate what we have seen with our own eyes in the first act. The play partially recovers its footing, but not soon enough to restore all the positive feelings it generated before intermission. While I have no problem with magical realism, I don't feel it works here. The points that I thought Ruhl wanted to make about the limits or limitlessness of love and the difficulties of parent and child to acknowledge each other’s sexuality do not need magical embellishment. It’s a flawed play with a very enjoyable first act. Running time: one hour 50 minutes including intermission.