Dan Cody's Yacht

B+

The title of this stimulating new play by Anthony Giardina (The City of Conversation) now at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I is a symbol of opportunity waiting to be seized lifted from The Great Gatsby. Kevin O’Neill (Rick Holmes; Junk, Lives of the Saints) is a financial manager in a wealthy Massachusetts suburb. Cara Russo (Kristen Bush; The City of Conversation, Kin) is his slacker son Conor’s (John Kroft) English teacher, who lives in the blue-collar town across the river. When we meet them, Kevin is trying to bribe Cara to raise the grade on his son’s essay. He also wants her to vote against a proposal to merge the two school districts. He berates her for not doing all she can to improve the prospects of her bright plus-size daughter Angela (Casey Whyland; Billy Elliot) and invites her to his monthly investment club where she meets his friends Geoff (Jordan Lage; Race, The Penitent) and Pamela Hossmer (Meredith Forlenza; 1984, The Winslow Boy) and Alice Tuan (Laura Kai Chen; Much Ado about Nothing). He persuades her that by investing her savings with him, she will be able to afford moving across the river so Angela can attend the better school and improve her chances of getting into a private college. Cara’s blue-collar friend Cathy (Roxanna Hope Radja; Frost/Nixon) whose daughter is friends with Angela cautions Cara not to make the move. Later, when Cara’s investment account takes a dip, a crisis arises. Kevin proposes a shady solution. Something that Kevin and Cara have in common is that they are both single parents. The play raises interesting questions about what a parent should be willing to do for a child’s sake. One puzzle is what Kevin’s motivation is in wanting to help Cara and her daughter. They have a strong chemistry which, since Kevin is gay, is not built on sex. Kevin’s character is a complex mix of the noble and ignoble. The actors are uniformly strong. Giardina has written a series of good scenes for two characters: Kevin and Cara, Kevin and Conor, Kevin and Angela, Cara and Angela, Cara and Cathy, Angela and Conor. He raises issues of income inequality, privilege, ambition, ethics and willingness to take risks. The play loses some of its energy toward the end as the playwright paints himself into a corner. For most of its length though, it is both engrossing and entertaining. John Lee Beatty’s (Doubt, Proof) scenic design makes effective use of a revolving set. The costumes by Catherine Zuber (My Fair Lady, Junk) befit their characters. Doug Hughes’ (Junk, The Father) direction is smoothly unobtrusive. Running time: two hours five minutes including intermission.

Junk

B+

Lincoln Center Theater has pulled out all the stops for its production of Ayad Akhtar’s (Disgraced, The Invisible Hand) look back at the world of finance in 1985. The size of the cast — 23 — and the sleek set by John Lee Beatty with modules that pop out as needed to facilitate smooth scene changes suggest that no corners were cut here. This is appropriate to the play’s theme. Robert Merkin (Stephen Pasquale; The Bridges of Madison County, Far From Heaven), the central character, is loosely based on Michael Milken, who turned the financial world upside down with his unsentimental application of the logic of globalism to corporate America, which often made companies worth more if they were dismembered and their unprofitable manufacturing operations closed irrespective of the number of jobs lost. The play follows the attempted hostile takeover of Everson Steel by a company backed by Merkin, who has discovered that Thomas Everson, Jr. (Rick Holmes; Hapgood, Matilda) has been cooking the books to hide the fact that profits from their pharmaceutical division have been used to hide the losses of their steel mills. When Israel Peterman (Matthew Rauch), whose company Merkin has selected to acquire Everson, and Merkin meet with Everson and his lawyer Maximilian Cizik (Henry Stram; The Cruiclble), it does not go well. The not so subtle anti-Semitism of the white-shoe financial powers versus the Jews who are threatening their status quo is an underlying theme. Some of the other characters we meet are an ambitious journalist Judy Chen (Teresa Avia Lim); Merkin’s loyal attorney Raul Rivera (Matthew Saldivar; Act One, Honeymon in Vegas), Murray Lefkowitz (Ethan Phillips), an investor with a nervous wife; Jacqueline Blount (Ito Aghayere), a lawyer who plays both sides against each other; Leo Tesler (Michael Siberry; When the Rain Stops Falling), an older investor with a taste for Judy and a distaste for “junk”; Boris Pronsky (Joey Slotnick; The Front Page), a shady middleman that Merkin’s wife Amy (Miriam Silverman; A Delicate Ship) begs him not to do business with; and Giuseppe Addesso (Charlie Semine), the N.Y. district attorney who is running for mayor. Virtually every character is corrupted by money at some point along the way. The lack of anyone sympathetic to root for is a problem for me. It is basically an ensemble piece with too many characters for any of them to be developed in much depth. If you are too young to remember the rise and fall of Milken, you may learn something new. Otherwise, your level of engagement may depend on your interest in finance and the economy. There’s more here to engage the intellect than the emotions. I thought Lucy Prebble’s play Enron was far superior. Catherine Zuber’s (Oslo, The King and I) costumes befit their characters. Doug Hughes (The City of Conversation, The Father) skillfully keeps the many strands under control. Running time: two hours 20 minutes including intermission.

Lives of the Saints ***

When Primary Stages offered a near-perfect production of “All in the Timing,” David Ives’s collection of six hilarious short plays, two years ago, I awarded it five stars. Now they are back with an evening of six more Ives playlets. Those expecting a reprise of Ives’s delicious word-play based sketches will be disappointed. The current collection is more substantive, but less stylistically successful. Most of the six plays (a seventh listed in the program was dropped to shorten the evening) are loosely tied together by the theme of goodness. “The Goodness of Your Heart” examines what one can expect from a good friend. “Soap Opera,” a pun-filled extended sketch about a repairman (think Maytag) who falls in love with a washing machine, shows the downside of perfection. “Enigma Variations” did not seem to fit the evening’s theme. With doubled characters and reversing roles, it was more frenetic than coherent. My favorite was “Life Signs,” in which a newly deceased mother thought to have lived an upright life suddenly begins talking to her grieving son and vividly disabusing him of that notion. “It’s All Good” shows a successful New York writer the life he might have had if he had never left southside Chicago. The title play, which closes the evening, demonstrates the simple goodness of two older Polish Catholic women preparing a funeral breakfast. Although the evening does not reach the delirious heights of “All in the Timing,” there are still lots of laughs. Returning from the previous production are director John Rando, set designer Beowulf Boritt, costume designer Anita Yavich and actors Carson Elrod (a comic genius) and Liv Rooth. They are joined by Arnie Burton, Rick Holmes and Kelly Hutchinson, who are just as adept at animating Ives’s characters. Although a bit disappointed that lightning did not strike twice, I had a good time. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes, including intermission.