What the Constitution Means to Me

C+

This work by Heidi Schreck (Grand Concourse, "Nurse Jackie") now in previews at New York Theatre Workshop is hard to categorize. It combines memoir, civics lesson, polemic, debate and Q&A into a piece that is both engaging and frustratingly disjointed. As a teenager, Ms. Schreck earned money for college by entering American Legion contests that involved delivering an essay on one’s personal experience of the constitution combined with an extemporaneous explication of one it its amendments. The early section of the play recreates one such presentation. The contest is interrupted by personal observations that include the history of domestic abuse over several generations in her family and her own experience of the importance of Roe v. Wade. At one point, Mike Iveson (The Sound & the Fury, Gatz), the actor who has been portraying the American Legion official conducting the contest, breaks the fourth wall with some information about his own life. Next we get a debate on whether to abolish the constitution, for which Ms. Schreck’s opponent is Thursday Williams, a 17-year-old high school senior from Queens. (Ms. Williams alternates performances with Rosdely Ciprain, who is just entering high school.) The audience is invited to react enthusiastically to the debaters and one audience member is selected to be the judge. The ushers distribute pocket editions of the constitution. (It’s the second one I’ve received at a theater this summer; they were also handed out at “The Originalist.”) Finally, under dim lighting, Ms. Schreck and Ms. Williams ask each other three questions allegedly submitted by the previous audience. The questions were not very interesting, which made for a very flat ending. Fortunately, Ms. Schreck is a very appealing performer, which made the event more enjoyable than my summary might suggest. Much of it is quite entertaining, as well as educational. Nevertheless, it does ramble rather aimlessly. Its inner logic escaped me. Considering that it has been presented in various incarnations for a decade, I was surprised how unpolished it seemed. Rachel Hauck (Hadestown, Grand Concourse) has recreated an American Legion social hall, complete with wood paneling and about 200 portraits of Legion bigwigs. Michael Kress’s (Hadestown, Noises Off) costumes seemed apt. The house was barely half-full. Director Oliver Butler (The Amateurs, The Open House) has his work cut out for him bringing order to this rather chaotic event before opening night. Running time: 90 minutes; no intermission.

Grand Concourse ***

In her new play now in previews at Playwrights Horizons, Heidi Schreck displays a talent for creating vivid characters whom she treats with compassion and humanity. Shelley (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), a 39-year-old nun who runs a soup kitchen in the Bronx, is undergoing a crisis of faith. Oscar (Bobby Moreno), the handsome Hispanic handyman, affects a working-class macho facade that he doesn’t entirely feel. Frog (Lee Wilkof), a homeless regular client, struggles against mental illness. When Emma (Ismenia Mendes), a troubled 19-year-old with a reckless streak, begins work as a volunteer, her behavior has an impact on the other three, especially Shelley. The play is a series of short scenes, punctuated by blackouts, that gradually reveal the characters as they perform their jobs. Many vegetables are chopped. Director Kip Fagan (Schreck’s husband) does an excellent job of choreographing the work sequences. The cast is uniformly excellent. Rachel Hauck’s set design really looks like a working kitchen. Jessica Pabst’s costumes suit each character. The play examines issues of faith and forgiveness, the motivations for doing good, the appropriateness (or lack thereof) of help given, the extremes to which neediness can lead, and the sense of workplace community. The results are both enlightening and entertaining. I do wish that Schreck had further clarified the reasons for Emma's strong impact on Shelley. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes; no intermission.

The Madrid *

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.)
Alas, the curse that the theater gods apparently placed on Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage I at City Center has not yet lifted. On paper "The Madrid" looked like a sure thing. With a cast led by Edie Falco and including Frances Sternhagen and Christopher Evan Welch; a playwright, Liz Flahive, with a previous MTC success and a strong track record writing for Falco on "Nurse Jackie;" and a first-rate director, Leigh Silverman, who helmed Flahive's previous MTC play, what could possibly go wrong? Plenty, as  it turns out. Falco plays Martha, a teacher in a Chicago suburb who suddenly walks out on her family and job and starts a new life in a seedy downtown apartment named The Madrid. Her 20-year old daughter Sarah (Phoebe Strole) tries to find a connection with her. Her long-suffering husband John (John Ellison Conlee) copes by selling everything that reminds him of her. Their meddlesome, needy neighbor Becca (Heidi Schreck) and her slightly creepy husband Danny (Welch) try to help in counterproductive ways. Martha's mother Rose (the always fine Sternhagen) tries desperate measures to bring her daughter home. Becca and Danny's gangly 16-year-old son Dylan (Seth Clayton) provides a brief moment of comic relief. The trouble is that the proceedings offer so little to involve the viewer that, by the end of two long listless acts, I no longer cared why Martha left or whether she would return. David Zinn's multipurpose set is efficiently versatile and Emily Rebholz's costumes are fine. Silverman does her best with the hand she has been dealt. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes including intermission.

There Are No More Big Secrets *

Heidi Schreck's new play at the Rattlestick starts with a drunken reunion of two couples who haven't seen each other in 15 years. The hosts, a pair of schoolteachers (a fine Gibson Frazier and a compulsively watchable Christina Kirk), welcome into their home an old friend (an overemoting Adam Rothenberg) and his Russian wife (Dagmara Dominczyk, who shines in the play's showiest role) who may be fleeing Russia because her investigative journalism angered the wrong people. Her husband was a childhood friend of both the hosts and had an affair with the wife. Their relationships are further complicated by a half-hearted dose of the supernatural that, for me at least, undermined the play. Nadia Alexander appears in the second act as a troubled teenager. John McDermott's set of an old country house well serves the play. I'm not sure whether Kip Fagan's direction was lacking or whether the writing just slacked off. With some misgivings, I stayed for the second act and regretted it. Unfortunately the liveliest character does not return and the promise of the play's early moments is largely dissipated. It's one of those frustrating plays that's just good enough that you wish it were better.