West Side Story

B

I will confess that I groaned when I heard that hotshot European director Ivo van Hove was going to direct this much-beloved musical. Having disliked his videocentric versions of The Damned and Network, I shuddered to think what he would do when he got his hands on this Laurents-Bernstein-Sondheim classic. When I further learned that he would not be using the iconic Robbins choreography so critical to the show’s success, I grew even more fearful. Judging from today’s preview at the Broadway Theatre, most of my fears turned out to be unwarranted. True, this production depends even more on video than the two shows I mentioned, but the video projections are generally better integrated into the production. While Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s choreography is no match for Robbins’s work, it has lots of energy and suits the production well. The omissions (e.g. “I Feel Pretty”) and reinterpretations may offend those who are devoted to the original versions, but they serve the director’s darker and grittier vision of the show. The young, diverse cast are excellent dancers, good actors and at least adequate singers. The two female leads, Shereen Pimentel as Maria and Yesenia Ayala as Anita had strong voices. Two of the male leads, Isaac Powell as Tony and Dharon E. Jones as Riff were out for the performance I attended, but their understudies, Jordan Dobson and Ahmad Simmons respectively, were fine. Amar Ramasar was strong as Bernardo. The costumes by An D’Huys were eclectic and not much help in distinguishing the Jets from the Sharks. The excellent lighting by Jan Versweyveld, who also designed the set, was important in that regard. The tattoos by Andrew Sotomayor are excessive and mostly unattractive. The set consists mainly of a video screen that covered the entire back wall that opened partially to reveal the drugstore and the bridal shop. The video design by Luke Halls is at the heart of the production. At times, it is used to amplify what the actors are doing. It was initially difficult for me to know where to look but I soon adjusted. At other times, the projection shows street scenes that, for some reason, move slowly forward. Elsewhere, it illustrates the current song, e.g. Puerto Rican hurricanes for “America” and abuse by police for “Gee, Officer Krupke.” Occasionally, it provides commentary on the present, such as a view of the border wall with Mexico. Most usefully, it shows the action in the drugstore and bridal shop which are basically too small and too far away to see properly. There are a couple of pandering gestures to the audience: the gang members gratuitously strip to the waist for the rumble and one of the gangs includes a same-sex couple. The show has been streamlined to 105 minutes, which allows less time for character development. I suspect that the less devoted you are to earlier productions, the more likely you are to enjoy this one. I think a younger audience will find it very appealing. Running time: one hour 45 minutes; no intermission.

Network

C

After seeing ivo van Hove’s version of The Damned, I feared what he would do once he got his hands on this 1976 classic satire written by Paddy Chayevsky and directed by Sidney Lumet. The near-unanimous praise from the London critics somewhat allayed my misgivings, but what I saw tonight in this adaptation by Lee Hall (The Pitmen Painters) mostly confirmed them. Let me say immediately that Bryan Cranston (All the Way, "Breaking Bad") is superb in the role of Howard Beale, the TV anchorman at the center of the action. Seeing him perform is the only thing that made the evening at all worthwhile for me. Everything else about the production is so overblown, so frenetic, so gimmicky and so disjointed that it wore me down long before it ended. Upon arrival, we see that the center of the stage is occupied, for no apparent reason, by actors performing yoga. Jan Versweyveld (The Crucible, A View from the Bridge) has configured the stage as a TV studio with the control room on one side and, for reasons best known to van Hove (A View from the Bridge) , a restaurant with six tables for two on the other. Five of them are filled by theatergoers who eat dinner throughout the play. At one point the empty table is occupied by two actors, having public sex among the diners. The restaurant bar which is at the far edge of the restaurant is not visible to most of the audience, but it doesn’t matter because the only scene that takes place there is captured on the large video screens where you are likely to watch most of the play. (Don’t worry about expensive seats; it’s all on the giant screen.) Beale’s boss and longtime best friend Max Schumacher (Tony Goldwyn; Promises, Promises; The Dying Gaul) fires him because his ratings are down. Diana Christensen (Tatiana Maslany, Mary Page Marlowe, "Orphan Black"), a ruthless young producer without a moral compass, has an affair with Max. Despite the sex scene at the restaurant, there is little apparent chemistry between Goldwyn and Maslany. Frank Hackett (Joshua Boone; Actually), an ambitious executive brought in by the network’s new corporate owner, wants to subordinate the news division to the programming division. Edward Ruddy (Ron Canada (Zooman and the Sign) is the longtime network chief who is trying without much success to preserve the network’s independence. Frank Wood (Side Man, The Babylon Line), a fine actor, has little opportunity to make an impression in the bland role of Nelson Chaney. Nick Wyman (Desperate Measures) is appropriately ponderous as corporate head Arthur Jensen. Alyssa Bresnahan (Napoli, Brooklyn), as Max’s wife, does her best with soap-opera-worthy lines. The production relentlessly assaults the audience with flashing screens, loud music and much scurrying about. The brief forays into audience participation were the only things that seemed half-hearted. Somewhere midst all the cacophony there’s a cautionary tale about the media that still resonates even though the media themselves may have changed. At play’s end, the large screen shows a collage of all the presidents since Ford taking the oath of office. This gave the audience an excuse to applaud George H.M. Bush and Obama and boo Trump. Just another gimmick. Go to see Cranston if you are a fan. Otherwise, just rent the movie. Running time: two hours; no intermission.

The Damned

C

The ever-provocative Park Avenue Armory is currently hosting a limited run of avant-garde director Ivo van Hove’s adaptation of the masterful 1969 Visconti screenplay, direct from the Comédie Française. If I may quote myself, in my review of Dead Poets Society two seasons ago, I said: “While there have been many films that were turned into successful musicals, adapting a movie for the stage without musicalizing it doesn’t seem to add any value.” Nothing I saw tonight changed my opinion. What van Hove has done here is particularly perplexing — the production makes such extensive use of video on a large screen that it comes across as neither fish nor fowl. I will confess that, with the exception of View from the Bridge, I have found van Hove’s work overblown, sensationalistic, indulgent and overpraised. As expected, there was gratuitous nudity, violence, depravity and effects included for their shock value. What I did not expect was the lugubrious pace and the confused storytelling. We observe the corrosive effect of the rise of Nazism on a Krupp-like family. With few exceptions, they are an unlikable bunch, driven by ambition and the desire for revenge. The patriarch Joachim (Didier Sandre) disdains the Nazis for their low class origins. His brutish second son Konstantin (Denis Podalydès) is an avid Nazi with a sensitive son, Gunther (Clément Hervieu-Léger). Sophie (Elsa Lepoivre), the widow of the first son, who was killed in the Great War, is a cold manipulator. She has a longtime lover Friedrich (Guillaume Gallienne) whom she has not married because he is not a nobleman. Her son Martin (Christophe Montenez) is gender fluid with a special interest in little girls. He also has mother issues, to put it mildly. Wolf von Aschenbach (Eric Génovèse) is a Nazi cousin who knows how to pit his relatives against each other. The only sympathetic adult characters are Joachim’s daughter Elisabeth (Adeline d’Hermy) and her principled husband Herbert (Loïc Corbery). The set design by Jan Versweyveld features a large orange platform with dressing tables on one side and six ominous coffins on the other. Their role in the play is a shocker. One of the highlights is the Night of the Long Knives. Van Hove’s version makes clever use of video but runs on far too long after it has made its point. If you are a van Hove completist or are eager for a chance to see fine French actors, you might find the evening worthwhile. If not, I suggest renting the movie with a superb cast that includes Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Charlotte Rampling and Helmut Berger. Running time: two hours, ten minutes; no intermission. In French with English surtitles.

The Crucible **

I am not a great admirer of this Arthur Miller play based on the Salem witch trials of 1692-93. While the witch hunt theme is just as resonant today as it was during the McCarthy era when it was written, the play seems to me too long, too wordy and too didactic. It has too many characters to flesh out sufficiently to be more than embodiments of points of view. Nevertheless, the stellar casting and my curiosity to see how hotshot director Ivo van Hove would impose his stamp on the material led me to buy a ticket. While I had some reservations about van Hove’s take on View from the Bridge, I did find it compelling and unified. Not so with The Crucible. Setting it in modern dress (costumed by Wojciech Dziedzic) didn’t bother me, but making the set (by Jan Versweyveld) a schoolroom featuring a giant blackboard and dressing the girls in school uniforms seemed pointless. Although he scrupulously follows Miller’s text, van Hove interpolates a couple of very brief nonverbal non-Miller scenes at the beginning and end of the first act. It disturbs me that one of them (and another scene later) virtually eliminates any ambiguity we should feel about whether witchcraft was actually taking place. And then there’s that strange four-footed visitor at the beginning of Act Three. Not even the curtain call escapes van Hove’s tinkering. As for the actors, it’s a mixed bag. The casting is nontraditional and the accents vary widely. Of the four stars, Sophie Okonedo as Elizabeth Proctor comes across the best by far. The role of John Proctor does not seem a natural fit for Ben Whishaw, but he handles it rather well. Ciaran Hinds is adequate but unmemorable as Deputy Governor Danforth. As Abigail Williams, Saoirse Ronan disappoints; her stage presence falls short of the powerful impression she makes onscreen. Jason Butler Harner is strong as Reverend Parris, as are Brenda Wehle as Rebecca Nurse and Jim Norton as Giles Corey. Tavi Gevinson’s Mary Warren seems too young. While I have often enjoyed the music of Philip Glass, I found his score, most of which consisted of a relentless background drone, a distraction rather than an enhancement. Running time: two hours 50 minutes.

A View from the Bridge ***

I wonder how I would have reacted to the current Broadway production of this Arthur Miller classic had I not known that this Young Vic import won three Oliviers — best actor for Mark Strong, best director for Ivo van Hove, and best play revival. Perhaps this foreknowledge raised my expectations too high. I will grant that this production has many strengths, foremost among them a riveting performance by Strong as Eddie Carbone. Of the other carryovers from the London cast, Nicola Walker skillfully underplays the role of Eddie’s wife Beatrice and Michael Gould is strong as Alfieri, the lawyer who serves as narrator and Greek chorus. On the other hand, I did not admire Phoebe Fox as Beatrice’s orphaned niece Catherine, for whom Eddie’s feelings are far more than fatherly. At a critical early point, her accent slipped from Brooklyn to Britain, which, for me at least, undermined much of what followed. Richard Hansell was fine in the smallish role of Louis, Eddie’s coworker. Of the newcomers to the cast, Michael Zegen is superb as Beatrice’s married cousin Marco, an illegal immigrant who made the difficult choice to leave wife and children behind in Sicily to save them from starvation. Russell Tovey is fine as Rodolpho, Marco’s blond younger brother, whose budding relationship with Beatrice leads to trouble. Admittedly it is very hard to imagine Tovey and Zegen as brothers. Thomas Michael Hammond has the tiny role of police officer. Jan Versweyveld’s strikingly simple set suggests a boxing ring, which is reinforced by the fact that several rows of theatergoers are seated on either side of the stage. The production is greatly enhanced by Tom Gibbons’s sophisticated sound design which makes effective use of snippets of sacred music, barely audible droning and a drum that punctuates the action. An D’Huys’s costume for Beatrice strains credibility. I can’t imagine that any overprotected girl in Red Hook in the 1950’s would be allowed to run around in a skirt that skimpy. It does fit with the crudely overdone first scene between Catherine and Eddie, during which she jumps on him and wraps her legs around him and he casually rests his hand on her thigh. No subtlety there. The choice to have the actors perform barefoot seemed an arbitrary touch to show the director’s cleverness. There is one long conversation scene that breaks the mounting tension. The final scene is a real audience grabber. Unfortunately it doesn’t make clear what actually transpired. For parallelism it is matched with an opening shower scene far from Miller territory. During  its best moments, the play is absolutely gripping. However, I felt that there are also flaws that detract from the general excellence. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes, no intermission.

Scenes from a Marriage ***

A clever friend referred to Ivo van Hove as a “destination director.” When he directs a play, the main attraction for many people is to see what he has done with the material rather than to see the work itself. Although his relationship with New York Theatre Workshop goes back to 1996, I have thus far avoided seeing any of his productions. Perhaps I have an innate suspicion of directors who think they know better than playwrights or filmmakers. In any case, his adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s superb television series and theatrical film was on my NYTW subscription, so I attended today’s preview. Van Hove’s first directorial stroke was to assign the roles of Johan and Marianne to three different couples portraying them at different stages of their marriage — Alex Hurt and Susannah Flood at the 10-year mark, Dallas Roberts and Roslyn Ruff a few years later, and Arliss Howard and Tina Benko at the moment they separate. Act One consists of three scenes roughly corresponding to the first three chapters of the filmed version. The gimmick is that the three scenes are performed simultaneously in three different areas of the theater. The audience moves from area to area in the order prescribed by the color of the wristband received upon arrival. I was in the pink group and saw the scenes in 3-1-2 time sequence. This was unfortunate because each scene had less impact than the preceding one. Howard and Benko are by far the strongest couple and, I thought, Roberts and Ruff are the least effective and have the weakest scene. Since the partitions are not soundproof, the audience hears snippets of dialogue and slamming doors from the other two scenes. No doubt this was a directorial choice. After a 30-minute intermission, the entire audience returns to the full theater, now configured in the round. Act Two follows the course of their post-separation relationship. Van Hove’s next distraction is that the opening scene of Act Two is played with all three couples on stage, sometimes speaking in unison, sometimes fugally, and sometimes changing partners in mid-sentence. Tripling the roles did not serve any purpose to me other than to demonstrate the director’s cleverness. The final two scenes are much more conventional and even touched by tenderness. The question I was left with at play’s end was “Why?” The film is regarded by many as a masterpiece and the acting by Erland Josephson and Liv Ulmann was incredible. Although much of the acting here is fine and the production is never boring, nothing approaches the film’s level, so I must again ask “Why mess with success?” The only answer I can think of is that the director wanted to. Running time: 3 hours, 30 minutes including 30-minute intermission.