On the Shore of the Wide World

D+

2006 must have been a really dismal year for London theater if this tepid family drama by Simon Stephens could win the Olivier award. I will grudgingly express admiration to the Atlantic Theater for their commitment to bringing three of his plays to New York although I wasn’t too impressed with the other two -- Bluebird and Harper Regan — either. However, I liked them better than Punk Rock at MCC or Heisenberg at MTC. Even his Tony-winner The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was an adaptation of someone else’s novel and owed a lot of its success to its brilliant staging. Therefore, I approached the present play with low expectations. They were met.  We meet three generations of the Holmes family of Stockport, the suburb of Manchester where Stephens grew up — grandparents Charlie (Peter Maloney) and Ellen (the always watchable Blair Brown), their son Peter (C.J. Wilson) and his wife Alice (Atlantic stalwart Mary McCann) and their two grandsons Alex (Ben Rosenfield) and Christopher (Wesley Zurick). There is also Alex’s girlfriend Sarah (Tedra Millan), his friend Paul (Odiseas Georgiadis), Peter’s client Susan (Amelia Workman) and Alice’s new friend John (Leroy McClain). We follow the Holmes family over the course of a year that is punctuated by tragedy. The play has a seemingly endless succession of short scenes that generated very little interest for me. I don’t require sympathetic characters, but I expect to feel some involvement which was lacking here. I looked at my watch often. There is lots of regret, missed opportunity and lack of communication. The fine cast, which struggles uncertainly with the accent, deserves better than this. The set design by Scott Park makes efficient use of space. Sarah Laux’s costumes are apt. Director Neil Pepe does his best with material that is basically inert. Running time: two hours 35 minutes including intermission. Seating advice: Avoid Row B at the Linda Gross Theater because it is not elevated above Row A.

Heisenberg **

When I reviewed Bluebird at the Atlantic Theater in 2011, I said: “Don't be brokenhearted if you weren't able to get tickets to see Simon Russell Beale in Simon Stephens' 1998 play, now in a sold-out run at Atlantic Stage 2.” I could say the same about his new play at Manhattan Theatre Club. Unless you are a die-hard Mary-Louise Parker fan, you won’t be missing much if you didn’t score tickets to this one. After seeing three of his plays (Harper Regan, Bluebird and Punk Rock) and his adaptation of the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I have concluded that Stephens shows much more talent as an adaptor than as a playwright. In this two-hander, Parker once again plays the quirky, troubled soul that she was born to play — over and over and over. She is joined by the impressive Denis Arndt, an actor with a long list of regional credits, but who is new to me. Parker plays Georgie Burns, a 40-ish American expat in London, who, as the play begins, has just impulsively kissed Alex Priest (Arndt), a 75-year-old butcher sitting on a bench in a train station. The motor-mouthed Georgie then practically drowns Alex in a sea of words. A week later she shows up at his shop unexpectedly. The nature of her interest in this older man is a mystery. We eventually learn the reason or, at least, the purported one. With Georgie there’s always uncertainty, because she is prone to expressing two diametrically opposed views simultaneously. (Perhaps that’s where the title comes from.) We follow their interactions over the next six weeks. I will say no more about the slender plot. It’s a tour de force for the actors, particularly Parker, but it didn’t otherwise hold much interest for me. City Center’s Studio at Stage II has been reconfigured with the audience on both sides of the elongated stage. Except for two tables and two chairs, the set by Mark Wendland is bare. The costumes by Michael Krass do not call attention to themselves. Mark Brokaw’s direction is uncluttered. Running time: 85 minutes, no intermission.

Punk Rock *

When I saw two previous plays by Simon Stephens (Harper Regan [http://bobs-theater-blog.blogspot.com/2012/09/harper-regan.html] and Bluebird [http://bobs-theater-blog.blogspot.com/2011/08/bluebird.html}) at the Atlantic Theater, I thought his work was moderately interesting. When I saw his adaptation for the stage of Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time [http://bobs-theater-blog.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-curious-incident-of-dog-in-night.html], I thought his work was brilliant. Therefore, I was looking forward to seeing the New York premiere of this 2009 drama, which received almost unanimous raves from the London critics. To say I was keenly disappointed with this MCC production would be a major understatement. Those who wish to avoid spoilers should stop reading here. One London critic described it as The History Boys meets Columbine, a comparison that is an insult to the former. Both plays are about the stress of English public (i.e. private) school students preparing for their A-levels, but all resemblance ends there. The teenagers in this play are all stereotypes: Bennett (Will Pullen), the bully; Cissy (Lilly Englert), his compliant girlfriend; Tanya (Annie Funke), overweight and usually overlooked; Chadwick (Noah Robbins), the bullied nerd; Lilly (Colby Minifie), the new girl with a dark secret; William (Douglas Smith), the troubled boy with a casual relationship to the truth who wants to date her; and Nicholas (Pico Alexander), the handsome jock that she prefers. The author puts them together in a pressure cooker and we wait to see who will explode. The final scene introduces the lone adult character, Dr. Harvey, played by David Greenspan, who, for once, manages to avoid his usual excesses. In a country where school shootings were not almost weekly occurrences, perhaps the play seemed more profound. For me it seemed merely extremely unpleasant and tedious. I will grant that the young cast is very good. The dialect coach Stephen Gabis got excellent results from them. Director Trip Cullman has not helped the play by tarting it up with the actors running around in animal masks between scenes. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes; no intermission (wise decision).

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time ****

Not since “War Horse” have I seen a play whose success owed so much to its production design. What set and costume designer Bunny Christie, video designer Finn Ross and, especially, lighting designer Paule Constable have accomplished is no less than to provide a visual analog of the mind of a 15-year old autistic boy with a talent for mathematics. This is not to denigrate the considerable accomplishments of Simon Stephens in adapting Mark Haddon’s award-winning book, of Marianne Elliott for so skillfully directing the play, and of the superb cast for bringing its characters to vivid life. Alex Sharp is remarkable as Christopher Boone, the boy who gets more than he bargained for when he sets out to discover who killed the neighbor’s dog. Ian Barford is excellent as his loving, but often misguided father. Enid Graham shines as the mother worn down by the difficulties of raising Christopher. Francesca Faridany is convincing as his sympathetic teacher Siobhan who helps him navigate his daily challenges and persuades him to write this story. Her reading of the story aloud serves as the narration that brings us in to the play. Stephens has remained quite faithful to the original text. Dialect coach Ben Furey has made the American cast sound convincingly British. I would not have believed that a book that is primarily based on Christopher’s inner thoughts could be brought so vibrantly to the stage. It is easy to understand how it won the Olivier for Best Play. NOTE: Be sure not to rush out the theater right after the curtain calls or you'll miss a treat. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes including intermission.

Harper Regan ***

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.)
Simon Stephens's provocative play was a hit in London when it premiered at the National Theatre in 2008. It went on to well-received productions in Chicago and San Francisco. Now it is in previews at The Atlantic Theater Company. Let me start by saying that I found it fascinating and annoying in almost equal measure. Mary McCann, onstage for two hours, is superb as a 41-year-old woman having a midlife crisis in an England that has lost its way. We see her in a series of scenes with her obnoxious boss (Jordan Lage), a 17-year old black student (Stephen Tyrone Williams), her mysteriously unemployed husband (Gareth Saxe), her difficult teenaged daughter (Madeleine Martin), a well-meaning nurse (Mahira Kakkar), a rabidly antisemitic journalist that she meets in a bar (Peter Scanavino), a married man that she meets at a hotel (Christopher Innvar), her estranged mother (the always excellent Mary Beth Peil), her mother's younger second husband (John Sharian) and his apprentice (Vandit Bhatt.) Almost every scene has dialogue that is at least slightly off kilter and ends unpredictably. A series of gradually revealed secrets builds effectively. Some of Harper's motivations are muddy, some of her behavior seems implausible, and the somewhat upbeat ending seems less than fully earned. The set of movable grey slabs by Rachel Hauck is approprately stark. Gaye Taylor Upchurch's direction is assured. I was alternately intrigued, annoyed and exhilarated, but never bored. (Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes including intermission.)

Bluebird **

Don't be brokenhearted if you weren't able to get tickets to see Simon Russell Beale in Simon Stephens' 1998 play, now in a sold-out run at Atlantic Stage 2. While Beale is fine as Jimmy, a taxi driver to whom fares seem compelled to unburden themselves, the play itself is a mixed blessing. Some of the passengers' stories are involving, but others misfire. A long scene between Jimmy and his estranged wife Clare (the excellent Mary McCann) is a bit contrived and unconvincing. The cast also includes Kate Blumberg, Michael Countryman, Mara Measor, Charlotte Parry, Tobias Segal, John Sharian and Todd Weeks. The pokey direction by Gaye Taylor Upchurch has more pregnant pauses than a Pinter play. The lighting by Ben Stanton attempts to suggest movement through traffic at night, but the flickering was a distraction. Incidentally, the title comes from the name of a small car popular as a London minicab. Running time: 110 minutes without intermission.