It’s hard to imagine that the same playwright Danai Gurira wrote both “Familiar” and “Eclipsed.” The former play was an enjoyable comedy of manners with African undercurrents. “Eclipsed “ is a devastating drama about the lives of four Liberian women living in a rebel compound as “wives” of the general. Gurira vividly differentiates her characters and captures their blend of cooperation and competition. Wife #1 (Saycon Sengbloh) was captured as a teenager and has come to accept her life. Wife #3 (Pascale Armand), several years younger, is flighty and pregnant. They unsuccessfully attempt to hide The Girl (Lupita Nyong’o), a teenager who has fled to the compound, to prevent her from becoming Wife #4. It turns out that Wife #2 (Zainab Jah) has become a hardened rebel soldier; armed with a rifle, she will be no man’s victim. Wife #1 is too proud and scornful to accept her assistance when she periodically returns to the compound. Rita (Akosua Busia), part of a visiting delegation of city women trying to end the civil war, takes an interest in the wives. She tries to get them to use their given names so they can reconnect with their past and see a future. Wife #2 recruits The Girl as a soldier. An uncertain future awaits at war’s end. The ensemble acting is exceptional with Nyong’o a standout. Except for a few slow moments in the first act, the play is consistently gripping. The set and costumes by Clint Ramos are evocative. Liesl Tommy’s direction is assured. Running time: 2 1/2 hours including intermission.
Friday, June 10, 2016
Sunday, June 5, 2016
The Purple Lights of Joppa Illinois **
Based on my reaction to earlier plays by Adam Rapp (Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling, The Hallway Trilogy, Red Light Winter), my expectations for his current play at Atlantic Stage 2 were low. To my great surprise, I found it both involving and touching. In Ellis (a superb William Apps), Rapp presents a man who has bipolar disease with psychosis, who has done some horrible things who commands both our fear and our compassion. When we meet him, he is nervously preparing to receive guests. His visitors turn out to be a pair of teenage girls, Monique (an irresistibly watchable Susan Heyward), a trash-talking 15-year old African-American girl and Catherine (Katherine Reis), a shy 13-year-old with asthma and IBS. Monique has “borrowed” her aunt’s driver’s license to drive Catherine to meet Ellis. We eventually learn who Catherine is and why she is there. The trio are joined by Barrett (Connor Barrett), who has enabled Ellis and Catherine to make contact online. Ellis’s attempt to hold it together falters, with frightening results. The visit concludes on a slightly hopeful note. Andromache Chalfant's generic apartment set is grimly realistic and Jessica Pabst’s costumes suit the characters well. The playwright directed with assurance. The play has some slow moments. If Heyward were not such a stage presence, I would have found her character an annoying cliche. Barrett’s role is a bit underwritten. Despite its shortcomings, the play succeeds in taking us to a place that we probably never wanted to go while getting us to care about someone we would rather dismiss. The audience reaction was quite mixed. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes; no intermission. NOTE. Avoid Row A; it’s behind row AA and not elevated.
Saturday, June 4, 2016
Indian Summer **
Gregory S. Moss’s new play at Playwrights Horizons has a lot going for it -- three appealing young actors — Owen Campbell, Elise Kibler and Joe Tippett — and a first-rate production with an attractive set design by Dane Laffrey featuring an inviting beach, apt costumes by Kaye Voyce, great lighting by Eric Southern and smooth direction by Carolyn Cantor. There’s a fourth actor, Jonathan Hadary, whom I usually find annoying, but in this case appropriately so, because his character is also annoying. Daniel (Campbell) is an awkward scrawny 16-year-old whose mother has dumped him for an indefinite period on his step-grandfather George (Hadary) a recently widowed eccentric, who lives in a shack in a small Rhode Island beach town. On the beach, Daniel meets Izzy, a scrappy, sexy townie. It is obvious that their initial hostility will soon change. Izzy’s boyfriend Jeremy, 10 years her senior, is a martial arts master who has developed his own private philosophy. Fortunately, Jeremy is played by Tippett (Familiar), who brings humanity to a cartoonish role. As Izzy, the stunningly gorgeous Kibler knows how to hold our attention even as the lines she must spout become increasingly implausible. I wish that the actors had not been forced to struggle with a Rhode Island accent. What starts as a simple summer idyll goes seriously off course in the second act with a bizarre scene between George and Izzy. George’s hijacking of the play’s ending is the final misstep that wiped out my early good feelings. The mostly-subscriber audience, probably relieved at not having to confront anything too edgy, loved it. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.
War **
After enjoying all three plays I have seen by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Appropriate, An Octoroon and Gloria), I arrived at LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater with high expectations. Unfortunately I was disappointed. Although I credit the playwright for his ambition and imagination, I did not feel that he had produced a coherent work. From reviews, I gather that the play has changed considerably since its 2014 Yale Rep premiere, Nevertheless it still did not seem like a finished product. The focus is divided among too many themes including sibling rivalry, family secrets, the scourge of dementia, dealing with parental illness, meeting parental expectations, racism in America and Germany from WWII to the present and man’s underlying simian nature. Particularly in the second act, there are too many long monologues that interrupt the flow. Roberta (the able Charlayne Woodard) is a well-to-do middle-aged African-American divorcee who has been rushed to a Washington hospital after suffering a stroke while visiting the ape house at the zoo. Her daughter Joanne (Rachel Nicks), a would-be children’s writer, is married to Malcolm (Reggie Gowland), a low key school teacher of no particular distinction, who is white. They have a young daughter. Joanne has only recently resumed a relationship with her mother after long years of estrangement. Her hostile brother Tate (Chris Myers), a political functionary working in Boston, flies in to be at his mother’s bedside and immediately lashes out at everyone including the kindly nurse (Lance Coadie Williams). We later learn that Tate and his male partner have recently split. Roberta was brought to the hospital by a mysterious woman who speaks almost no English; this is Elfriede (Michelle Shay), a German half-sister that Roberta has only recently discovered and, somewhat implausibly, never mentioned to anyone. Malcolm discovers a man staying at Roberta’s apartment, Elfriede’s angry son Tobias (Austin Durant), who is out to get a share of his late grandfather’s legacy. The nonstop shouting and bickering between Tate and everyone else grows quickly tiresome; Tate is so relentlessly nasty that I eventually cringed whenever he opened his mouth. The play’s most interesting feature is that for much of the first act we witness the comatose Roberta trying to regain her bearings with the assistance of a pack of gorillas led by Alpha (Williams again) whose language is projected as subtitles. It did not work for me. Simian imagery pervades the play from the monkey-sound taunts at Roberta’s father in Germany to the ape house at the zoo and the apes in her struggle for consciousness. Mimi Lien’s elegant scenic design is evocatively lit by Matt Frey. Montana Blanco’s costumes are apt. I can’t fault director Lileana Blain-Cruz for failing to bring all the disparate elements together better. While this evening was a disappointment, three hits out of four is still an enviable record for a playwright. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes including intermission.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Confusions ***
In addition to the American premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s 79th play, “Hero’s Welcome,” 59E59’s Brits Off Broadway season is presenting his 17th play, actually an evening of five loosely connected short plays, which, although enormously popular in England, has somehow never reached our shores. Five of the six actors from “Hero’s Welcome” are back, playing 22 roles.
In “Mother Figure,” Lucy (Elizabeth Boag) is a young mother whose rarely at home traveling salesman husband Harry has left her alone with her three small children so long that she has forgotten how to relate to adults. When her not-so-happily married neighbors Rosemary (Charlotte Harwood) and Terry (Stephen Billington) pop in unexpectedly, she treats them as misbehaving children with amusing results.
In “Drinking Companion,” we meet the pathetic Harry (Richard Stacey) haplessly trying to pick up an attractive young woman Paula (Harwood) and/or her friend Bernice (Boag) in a hotel bar attended by a fey waiter (Billington).
“Between Mouthfuls” takes us to the hotel restaurant where the same waiter (Billington) is serving two tables, each with an unhappily married couple. At one table we have Martin (Stacey), a workaholic careerist and Polly (Harwood), his neglected wife just back from a Mediterranean holiday. At the other table are Martin’s boss Mr. Pearce (Russell Dixon) and his wife (Boag) who suspects him of infidelity on his recent business trip. The gimmick is that we hear only what the waiter hears. As he moves away from either table, we no longer hear that couple’s conversation. The dinner turns out badly for both couples, but entertainingly for us.
After intermission we get “Gosforth’s Fete,” the hilarious tale of a small town fair during which everything that can go wrong does. Gosforth (Dixon), the local big wheel, is frantically struggling with arrangements. When their distinguished guest Mrs. Pearce (Boag), the town councillor arrives, he asks the rather dim vicar (Stacey) to show her around. The village spinster Milly (Harwood) who is serving tea for the event announces to Gosforth that she is pregnant with his child. Since the malfunctioning PA system has mysteriously sprung to life, her announcement is heard by all assembled including her scoutmaster fiance Stewart (Billington). More mayhem follows. The actors get ample opportunity to demonstrate their superb timing and talent for physical humor.
The final piece, “A Talk in the Park,” brings the evening to a melancholy close. Five lonely people play a game of musical chairs on four park benches, each one changing benches to escape an unwanted conversation only to drive the next benchmate to similarly distraction.
The first two plays run on a bit too long after making their point. The plays that precede and follow intermission are the most entertaining. For me the dry patches were more than compensated by the hilarious moments.
The creative team is the same as for “Hero’s Welcome.” For details, see that review (http://bobs-theater-blog.blogspot.com/2016/05/heros-welcome.html).
They announced a running time of two hours including intermission, but it actually ran 2 hours 25 minutes.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Theater Suggestions: Second Chances
Three plays that I enjoyed are back for reprises this summer — “Small Mouth Sounds” at Pershing Square Signature Center, “Skeleton Crew” at Atlantic Theater Company and “Sense & Sensibility” at The Gym at Judson. Check www.theatermania.com for dates and discounts.
Here are links to my reviews of these three shows:
Shuffle Along or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed ****
There is an embarrassment of riches onstage at The Music Box in this tribute to the first all-black musical to reach Broadway. Brian Stokes Mitchell plays the genteel F.E. Miller and Billy Porter is Aubrey Lyles, his abrasive partner in a blackface vaudeville team who suggested expanding one of their skits into a musical. Joshua Henry is lyricist Noble Sissle and Brandon Victor Dixon is composer-pianist Eubie Blake, the pair who join them in this enterprise. Audra McDonald is Lottie Gee, star of the new show. In addition to their usual talents of acting and singing, the five leads join the fantastic dancers in performing Savion Glover’s brilliant tap choreography. Mitchell, whom I have found overbearing in recent years, manages to submerge his ego into the role with fine results. McDonald, as always, is a phenomenon; it is inconceivable that she was not Tony-nominated. Dixon and Porter are both fine. Adrienne Warren is a knockout both as the show’s second female Gertrude Saunders and as her successor Florence Mills. Brooks Ashmanskas, the sole Caucasian onstage, is a delight playing several of the men who placed obstacles in the production’s path. The abundant talent of the performers is equalled by the superb sets by Santo Loquasto, the riotous costumes by Ann Roth, the evocative lighting by Jules Fisher & Peggy Eisenhower and the wonderful arrangements and orchestrations by Daryl Waters. Director George C. Wolfe keeps the show moving energetically. It is the book, also by Wolfe, that I found wanting. The story of mounting a show against all obstacles seems cliched, even with racial prejudice added to the list of problems. With five main protagonists, there is too little time to develop any of them very deeply. Perhaps the book should have focused on Lottie, especially her long affair with the married Blake and her sacrifice of career advancement for him. I don’t see how the show could possibly have been considered a revival because Wolfe tosses out virtually the entire book of the 1921 show. Only one song “(I’m Just) Wild about Harry” is presented in its original context. The second act, which chronicles the fading fortunes of those involved with the show and the show itself is more told than shown. At times I felt I was watching an illustrated history lesson. Nevertheless, you won’t find more talent on one stage anywhere else on Broadway. With all the book’s flaws, the story represents an important piece of theater history and black history that should not be forgotten. Sadly the audience was practically all-white. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. NOTE: Avoid seats in the first few rows if you want to see the dancers’ feet.
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