Moulin Rouge

A-

Baz Lurhrmann’s 2001 cult film musical has been adapted for Broadway with a book by John Logan (Red) and a jukebox score curated, orchestrated and arranged by Justin Levine (Here Lies Love) into a production that is relentlessly entertaining. The opulent scenic design by Derek McLane (The Parisian Woman) transforms the Al Hirschfeld Theater into a wonderland of gold and red, featuring a windmill above one side of the proscenium and a blue elephant above the other. Catherine Zuber’s (My Fair Lady) wonderful costumes present heightened versions of 1899 Parisian attire. Everything is perfectly lit by Justin Townsend (The Humans). Karen Olivo (West Side Story, In the Heights) combines earthiness, vulnerability and charisma as Satine, the nightclub’s star who has no illusion that “courtesan” is anything more than a polite word for “whore.” She is well-balanced by Aaron Tveit’s (Catch Me If You Can, Next to Normal) Christian, an innocent from Lima, Ohio just arrived in Paris to make his mark as a songwriter. He fortuitously meets bohemian writer Toulouse-Lautrec (Sahr Ngaujah; Fela!) and tango dancer Santiago (Ricky Rojas; Burn the Floor), who enlist him to write the music for the show they hope to present at the Moulin Rouge. Danny Burstein (My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof) gives a multilayered portrayal of Harold Zidler, the club’s impresario, who is eager to give Satine to the Duke of Monroth (Tam Mutu; Doctor Zhivago) in return for his providing financial backing for the failing nightclub. Satine and Christian are forced to hide their budding romance from the Duke. Satine also hides from Christian the fact that she has consumption. Logan’s book captures all the melodrama, but does not have much chance for nuance since it must make room for so many songs plus spectacular dance numbers with choreography by Sonya Tayeh (Hundred Days, “Rent: Live”). What makes this the ultimate jukebox musical is that the score is comprised of over 70 songs or fragments of songs from a cross-section of recent pop composers. Levine has cleverly built a musical collage that presents familiar material in unexpected contexts. Throughout the evening, there were chuckles from the audience as they recognized familiar songs. How much pleasure you derive from this added dimension depends on how familiar you are with pop music (In my case, not very). The cast is uniformly strong, the dancers are amazing, and the entire production, ably directed by Alex Timbers (Beetlejuice, Here Lies Love), is dazzling. If you just sit back and let all the over-the-top spectacle roll over you, you will enjoy yourself immensely. One quibble: the extended curtain call number, although terrific, undercuts the mood of the show’s actual ending. Running time: two hours 45 minutes including intermission.)

Boesman and Lena

B-

In a review of the 2000 film based on Athol Fugard’s (Blood Knot, “Master Harold” …and the Boys) searing drama, the Variety critic expressed the thought that the work managed the difficult feat of recalling both “Waiting for Godot” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” There is at least a grain of truth in this observation. In this Signature Theatre production, the set’s barren landscape with one dead tree certainly could be shared by Beckett’s play and both works are about a pair condemned to endless wandering. Like Albee’s couple, Fugard’s is a codependent pair prone to provoking each other. Boesman and Lena are coloureds, i.e. of mixed race, whose life in apartheid South Africa is a living hell. The policy of forced removals has turned them into domestic refugees with no prospects for a settled life. Watching a day in their life is almost unbearably painful. We meet them on a mud flat after their most recent shantytown has been demolished by the government. Exhausted after a long day of walking with most of their worldly goods on her head, Lena voices her unhappiness and begs for some wine, to Boesman’s deaf ear. We learn that he has mostly come to ignore her when he is not taking out his frustration with life by beating on her. They have been together for several years and had one child who lived for six months and several stillbirths. As they set up their lean-to, Lena sees someone approaching and, against Boesman’s wishes, invites him to join them. Their guest turns out to be a frail, elderly Xhosa tribesman, whose language they do not understand. Nevertheless, out of her fierce desire for companionship, Lena welcomes him as someone to listen to her. Boesman is not happy about it. Will Lena’s accumulation of grievances against Boesman lead her to finally leave him? The main strength of this production is the acting. Zainab Jah (Venus, Eclipsed) is superb as Lena and Thomas Silcott (Coming Home) is haunting as the old man. Sahr Ngaujah (Fela!, Mlima’s Tale) is a bit problematic; his Boesman is so relentlessly unpleasant that there is no inkling of why Lena would ever have been drawn to him. I don’t know whether the problem is in the script or in the performance. Susan Hilferty’s (Wicked, Into the Woods) costumes and bleak set are evocative. I have qualms about a few decisions by director Yaël Farber (London: Salomé, The Crucible). Having the pair wander through the audience before the play actually begins was not particularly effective and merely slowed things down. The decision to eliminate the intermission may have been determined more by fear of audience attrition than by artistic considerations. Two hours without a break was a challenge for my powers of concentration. It would have been helpful to have a few program notes about the prevailing racial stratification under apartheid as well as a short glossary of frequently used Afrikaans words. In today’s era of abused refugees, the play is all too timely. It is also one of the most depressing plays I have ever seen. Running time: two hours; no intermission.

Mlima's Tale

B-

This new work by two-time Pulitzer winner Lynn Nottage (Ruined, Sweat), now at The Public Theater, is a moral tale about the illicit ivory trade. If you have been hiding under a rock, you might not know that poachers are still killing elephants for their tusks even though the ivory trade has been outlawed. Ms. Nottage traces the path from the brutal killing of Mlima, one of Kenya’s oldest and largest elephants, to the unveiling of the art work created from his tusks at a rich collector’s penthouse. Along the way, we meet the greedy and corrupt people who fund the poachers, bribe the police, shipping company and customs officials; commission the art and carve the ivory with pretended concern for its  source. All these people are played by three fine actors — Kevin Mambo (The Fortress of Solitude), Jojo Gonzalez (Small Mouth Sounds) and Ito Aghayere (Junk, Familiar). Occasionally  I became confused about who they were playing at any given moment. The fact that the first roles played by Ms. Aghayere are men compounded my confusion. Ms. Nottage attempts with intermittent success to give the characters enough individuality to keep them from seeming just cogs in a machine. Her most stunning creation is Mlima, charismatically portrayed by Sahr Ngaujah (Fela!, Master Harold and the Boys) more by movement than by words. Mlima is a witness to the action who daubs each character with white paint as each becomes a guilty participant. Perhaps this marks them for future haunting or punishment; they receive none here. The spare set design by Riccardo Hernandez (Miss You Like Hell, Indecent), expressively lit by Lap Chi Chu, avoids distraction. Between scenes, texts that I assume are African maxims, are projected. Jennifer Moeller’s (Sweat, Cardinal) costumes are a big help in identifying the characters. Musician Justin Hicks plays the drums and occasionally sings evocatively. Jo Bonney (Father Comes Home from the War) directs with great fluidity. It’s all admirable, but a bit remote and didactic, unlike previous plays by Ms. Nottage that I have enjoyed. Running time: one hour 20 minutes, no intermission.

"Master Harold" ...and the Boys **** A

A superb revival of Athol Fugard’s 1992 masterpiece, directed by the playwright, is the latest offering at Signature Theatre. In this semi-autobiographical work, Fugard portrays a critical moment in the longtime relationship between Hally (Noah Robbins), a 17-year old Afrikaaner, and two black employees of his family’s business, the wise Sam (Leon Addison Brown) who has tried to be a mentor to Hally and the impulsive Willie (Sahr Ngaujah). Hally’s father, badly injured in WW II, is an alcoholic. His mother has been forced to be the family breadwinner, first by operating a boarding house, since then by running a tea room. The lonely, seething, embittered Hally has turned to Sam and Willie since early childhood for companionship. When a telephone call from his mother bodes ill for Hally’s future, he lashes out at the only people he feels any control over. There are lighter moments of Sam and Willie preparing for a dance contest and of Hally recollecting happier times, but the play builds inexorably to its lacerating climax. Every aspect of this production is top-notch. All three actors fully inhabit their roles, the realistic set by Christopher H. Barreca is excellent, Susan Hilferty’s costumes are fine and Fugard’s direction is, as one would expect, assured. I could quibble that the play’s metaphors are occasionally a bit heavy-handed, but it is indisputably a modern classic. I highly recommend seeing it. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes; no intermission.

Signature Plays **

On paper it must have seemed like a good idea to present a triple bill of revived short works by playwrights who were in Signature Theatre’s Legacy program. For someone like me who has a limited tolerance for absurdist theater, the results were not gratifying. Yesterday’s avant garde often seems quaint or just annoying today. 

Edward Albee’s “The Sandbox” at least offered a bit of drollery and a chance to see three fine actors — Alison Fraser, Frank Wood and Phyllis Somerville as Mommy, Daddy and Grandma, respectively— and hunky Ryan-James Hatanaka as The Young Man. Melody Giron played the cello. 

Maria Irene Fornes’s “Drowning” is a strange tale of unrequited love in which the three characters — Pea (Mikeah Ernest Jennings), Roe (Sahr Ngaujah) and Stephen (Wood again) — are dressed like humans but inexplicably wear grotesque masks that make them look more like sea lions. 

The longest and most complex work is Adrienne Kennedy’s “Funnyhouse of a Negro,” a surrealistic look at racial identity and racism through the mind of Sarah (Crystal Dickinson), a mixed-race graduate student on the Upper West Side. Except for her landlady (Fraser) and her boyfriend (Nicholas Bruder), all the characters represent aspects of Sarah’s inner conflict. They include Queen Victoria Regina (April Matthis), the Duchess of Hapsburg (January LaVoy), Patrice Lumumba (Ngaujah), Jesus (Jennings), and Sarah’s mother (Pia Glenn.) The short scenes are punctuated by blackouts. Along about the tenth one, I began praying that the next would be the last. While I can appreciate the impact the play must have had when new, it just didn’t work for me now.

The production values are first-rate with sets by Mimi Lien, costumes by Kaye Voyce and lighting by Mark Barton. Lila Neugebauer directed. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes including two intermissions.

The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek ***

Even though he has already written over a score of plays about life in South Africa during and after apartheid, Athol Fugard still has things to say on the subject. His new play at Signature Theatre is loosely based on the career of outside artist Nukain Mabuza, a black farm laborer who painted colorful designs on the boulders located on the farm owned by the Afrikaaner family who employed him. They encouraged him and bought him paint to spend his Sundays turning the rocks into stone “flowers.” In Fugard’s fictionalized version of his life, the aged Nukain (Leon Addison Brown) arrives with his 11-year old assistant Bokkie (Caleb McLaughlin) to tackle the last unpainted boulder, a gigantic one he calls “The Big One.” He feels artistically blocked and unable to paint the rock until Bokkie’s suggestion that he paint eyes on it. Doing so releases a flood of creative energy and, instead of a flower, he turns the rock into an abstract record of his life. When the boss’s wife Elmarie (Bianca Amato) arrives bearing leftovers, she dislikes his painting and tells him to paint over it the following weekend and replace it with another floral design. Bokkie is horrified and sasses her. She is enraged at his cheekiness and tells Nukain to use his belt on him. The irony is that Nukain is so poor he doesn’t even own a belt. 

22 years later, the adult Bokkie, now known by his given name Jonathan (Sahr Ngaujah) returns to Revolver Creek where he is greeted by a hostile Elmarie brandishing a pistol. She does not recognize him and is on edge because of the recent murder and torture of her neighbors by blacks. Most of the act consists of long alternating speeches by the two, each passionately defending a point of view. Fugard plays fair in presenting their perspectives and mostly avoids didacticism. The play ends on a cautiously optimistic note.

The production is exemplary. The cast could not be better. Christopher H. Barreca’s evocative set draws you in immediately. Susan Hilferty’s costumes are appropriate. The playwright’s direction is uncluttered. It’s not a major Fugard play, but still a welcome addition to his canon. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes including intermission. 

NOTE: I suggest staying in your seat at intermission because the set change is extremely interesting. I also suggest avoiding the first two rows (unless you have a foot fetish) because you’ll be staring at the performers’ feet.