M. Butterfly

C+

Since I did not see either the original 1988 Broadway production or the 1993 film, I approached this revival, directed by Julie Taymor, without preconceptions. Although I had read the mostly negative reviews and the criticisms of David Henry Hwang’s revised script, I was prepared to enjoy the production on its own terms and, to some extent, I did. Clive Owen (Old Times), whose natural charm makes him an unconventional choice to play the socially awkward Rene Gallimard, carries it off well. In the key scene where Song Liling (Jin Ha; Troilus and Cressida) enchants him by performing an aria from Madama Butterfly, he is undermined by unfortunate makeup that makes him look like a drag queen; in later scenes he is much more believable as a woman. Incidentally, he is an exceptional dancer in one of the Chinese opera scenes, all of which are quite colorful and energetic. The secondary roles are competently filled by Enid Graham (Bull in a China Shop) as Rene’s wife Agnes, Murray Bartlett (HBO’s “Looking”) as Pinkerton/Marc, Michael Countryman (Six Degrees of Separation) as Sharpless/Toulon/Judge, Clea Alsip (The Way We Get By) as Pinup Girl/Renee, and Celeste Den (Chinglish) as Comrade Chin. The set design by Paul Steinberg with large movable panels that slide and swivel is eye-catching at first but grows tiresome quickly. Constance Hoffman’s costumes are excellent. The complex story of sexual fantasy, self-delusion, the blindness of love, espionage, Western imperialism, and the Chinese cultural revolution remains fascinating even though the playwright’s revisions to bring it closer to actual events may have added too much information at the cost of mystery. There are occasional moments, particularly at the trial, when it becomes too much like a geopolitical lecture. Nevertheless, there is much to admire. Running time: two hours 20 minutes including intermission.

School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play

A-

One of the hallmarks of the current season has been the proliferation of fine plays with all-female ensembles. First we had the excellent Mary Jane at New York Theatre Workshop. A revival of The Wolves is currently in previews at Lincoln Center Theater. And now MCC Theater has brought us this delightful play by Jocelyn Bioh (In the Blood; Men on Boats), marking her New York debut as playwright. Set in a girls’ boarding school in central Ghana in 1986, it introduces us to four students who are members of a clique led by mean girl Paulina Sarpong (Maameyaa Boafo) who intends to be the school’s contestant in the upcoming Miss Ghana pageant. During the early scenes, we get an amusing look at how Paulina reigns over her subjects — cousins Gitty (Paige Gilbert) and Mercy (Mirirai Sithole), the bookish Ama (Nike Kadri; The Death of the Last Black Man...) and the food-addicted Nana (Abena Mensah-Bonsu). There are hilarious examples of their misunderstanding of American culture, e.g. that White Castle is an elegant restaurant. Paulina’s plans are endangered by the arrival of a new student Ericka Boafo (Nabiyah Be; Hadestown), recently relocated from Ohio, who has looks, charm and talent to spare. The rivalry between the two girls is paralleled by the tense relationship between no-nonsense headmistress Francis (Myra Lucretia Taylor; Nine, Familiar) and the stylish Westernized pageant recruiter Eloise Amponsah (Zainab Jah; Eclipsed), herself a former Miss Ghana, who had tangled as classmates in the past. There’s a nice bonus for the recruiter and a substantial gift for the school that yields the winning contestant. Bioh overlays the well-worn conventions of teen-age cliques and beauty pageant competition with an additional ingredient: colorism — the belief even within the black community that, when it comes to skin color, lighter is better. Eloise favors Ericka over Paulina because she is the fairer and thereby "more commercial" of the two. How far will Paulina go to prevent Ericka’s selection? How far will Eloise go to thwart Paulina? Why is Paulina so mean? What secrets is Ericka hiding? Will all their efforts have any meaningful impact anyway? Has anything changed since 1986? Come, find out and be entertained. The actors are all wonderful. Director Rebecca Taichman (Indecent, Time and the Conways) has demonstrated her usual sure but deft hand. Arnulfo Maldonado’s (Charm) schoolhouse set is perfect from the perforated windows to the corrugated ceiling and tropical fans. Dede M. Ayite’s (The Royale, Bella) costumes, especially for the pageant, are delightful. Running time: one hour 12 minutes.

Once On This Island

B+

I recall being underwhelmed when I saw this Lynn Ahrens-Stephen Flaherty musical back in 1991. Although it was nominated for several Tonys, it did not win any. Nevertheless, it ran for 489 performances and apparently developed quite a following. Now it is back on Broadway at Circle in the Square where its previews have been selling out with an audience skewing decades younger than the usual Broadway demographic. I decided to give it a second try. I suggest you arrive fifteen minutes early to watch the actors cleaning up the set representing their Caribbean island after it has been hit by a storm. When the play actually begins, the islanders tell a frightened young girl the story of Ti Moune (a radiant Hailey Kilgore), who had been rescued as a child from a tree by her adoptive parents Tonton Julian (Phillip Boykin) and Mama Euralie (Kenita R. Miller). When Daniel Beauxhomme (Isaac Powell), a son of the light-skinned ruling class, is severely injured in an auto accident in their village, she is the only one who will help him. She nurses him and falls in love with him. The gods take a keen interest in island life. We meet Agwe (Quentin Earl Darrington), god of the sea; Papa Ge (in a gender-bender, played — excellently, I might add, by a woman — Merle Dandridge); Asaka (Alex Newell), goddess of the earth; and Erzulie (Lea Salonga), goddess of love. Papa Ge and Erzulie make a bet whether death or love will be stronger when love is put to the test by betrayal. The ensemble is strong. The dance numbers by Camille A. Brown were the highlights for me. It is hard to believe that there are only four musicians because the sound is not skimpy at all. Dane Laffrey’s set design provides a visual feast and Clint Ramos’s costumes, particularly those for the deities, are superb. Michael Arden’s direction is assured. While I will never count it among my favorite musicals, I do have a new respect for it as a well-crafted work that creates a vivid world and offers some creative storytelling along with some appealing music and spirited dancing. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

Bright Colors and Bold Patterns

B

If you don’t like gay-themed plays or one-person shows or are offended by rough language, drinking and drug taking, you can stop reading here. This play is not for you. If you’re still with me, you might enjoy this piece, which was a Times Critic's Pick when it ran very briefly at Barrow St. Theatre last year and is now having an encore run at Soho Playhouse. Drew Droege, who wrote and performs the work, plays Gerry, a bitchy 40-ish gay man in Palm Springs for the weekend to attend the wedding of his friend Josh to Brennan, a dull man he detests. Gerry is sharing a house with his former roommate Dwayne, Dwayne’s young new boyfriend Mack, whom he has not previously met, and Dwayne’s old boyfriend Neil, whom he loathes. We never actually see the three housemates, but Gerry converses with them so convincingly that they are vivid presences. For the first hour of the play, Gerry’s motormouth, fueled by booze and coke, is on a nonstop rant. Among his many grievances is the notation on the wedding invitation not to wear bright colors or bold patterns as if it were part of a larger campaign to stamp out gay culture. During the last 20 minutes, Gerry finally slows down and becomes more contemplative. He expresses the fear that greater acceptance of gays may bring with it greater pressure for conformity. The play occasionally sags and is overloaded with pop cultural references, many of which escaped me. Nevertheless, it is a real tour de force for Drew Droege and for me it was worthwhile just to see him perform. Dara Wishingrad’s poolside set looked cramped on the small stage. The ubiquitous Michael Urie (Torch Song, The Government Inspector) directed. Running time: 80 minutes; no intermission.

Office Hour

D

Since there’s a warning sign at the theater entrance, it’s no spoiler to advise you that there are gunshots in Julia Cho’s (Aubergine) new play at the Public Theater. The playwright takes the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech as her inspiration and turns it into what is basically a set of variations on gun violence for no good reason that I could find. The English department at an unnamed university does not know how to deal with Dennis (Ki Hong Lee), a troubled Korean-American writing student who hides behind sunglasses and a hoodie, never speaks and whose writings are so violently perverse that the other students are afraid to come to class. In the first scene we meet three instructors — David (Greg Keller; Animal, Belleville), who flunked Dennis and is convinced that Dennis is responsible for anonymous negative reviews against him; Genevieve (Adeola Role; Eclipsed), a ringer for Nikki Giovanni who warned against the real-life shooter-to-be and threatened to resign if he were not removed from her class; and Gina (Sue Jean Kim; Aubergine, The End of Longing), his new instructor, who David and Genevieve think might be able to draw Dennis out and get him to seek help because of their shared Asian-American background. The bulk of the play consists of Dennis’s visit to Gina’s office hour, seen in several versions, all of which end badly, with an escalating level of violence. If the playwright’s intention was to show how easily we become desensitized to repetitive violence, she did succeed at that. Unfortunately I thought the main effect of the play was to trivialize an important topic. The actors are fine, although Ki Hong Lee does not fit the description of Dennis as extremely unattractive. Takeshi Kata’s (The Profane) office set has the right look and mysteriously emerges from the dark, no doubt a very expensive effect. Kaye Voyce’s (After the Blast) costumes befit the characters well. Bray Poor’s sound design is alarmingly effective. Neel Keller (Forever) directed. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

Illyria

D

I fear that playwright Richard Nelson is in danger of becoming a victim of self-parody. He seems to have succumbed to a one-size-fits-all solution to every dramatic problem: drag out a large table, some food and a bunch of actors and let the conversation begin. This worked out very well in the Apple family plays and somewhat less well in the Gabriel family plays, but he has definitely hit the point of diminishing returns in his latest effort for the Public Theater. Allegedly meant as a tribute to Joseph Papp and the other founders of the New York Shakespeare Festival as they struggled for survival during the summer of 1958, it sheds little light or heat. We meet Festival producer Papp (John Magaro; The Front Page), his actress wife Peggy (Kristen Connolly), press agent Merle Dubuskey (Fran Kranz), director Stuart Vaughan (John Sanders; Groundhog Day), his wife Gladys (Emma Duncan) who is Papp’s assistant; musician/composer David Amram (Blake DeLong), stage manager John Robertson (Max Woertendyke) and actresss Colleen Dewhurst (Rosie Benton). Not seen but frequently heard of is her husband, actor George C. Scott. Mary Bennett (Naian Gonzalez Norvind; How To Transcend a Happy Marriage) is a young actress auditioning for a role. Bernie Gersten (Will Brill; Act One), a stage manager, is a long-time friend of Papp’s. Vaughan, who has been cutting back his work with the Festival for more lucrative work elsewhere, is one of the few characters who comes across with any vividness. Most of the others, who, if you Google them, were fascinating people, are virtual ciphers here. We hear about fights with Robert Moses, the imminent destruction of Carnegie Hall, the razing of a neighborhood to build Lincoln Center, the fallout from testifying before HUAC, but these are mostly fleeting references. At the end of the long first scene, I was hopeful; by the end of the second, considerably less so. The rambling third scene squandered whatever positive feelings I had left for the play. Interestingly, what I feared most proved to be a non-issue: there were many complaints about difficulty hearing the actors. I was going to get a listening device but the line was so long I gave up and did without. From the far end of the sixth row, I had no problem hearing. If only there had been more worth listening to. The set design which mainly involved well-worn tables and chairs was by Susan Hilferty (who also designed the costumes) and Jason Ardizzone-West. The playwright directed. Running time: one hour 50 minutes; no intermission.

Harry Clarke

C+

Vineyard Theatre opens its 35th season with the world premiere of this solo play by David Cale. Billy Crudup (No Man’s Land, Arcadia, The Pillowman) plays Philip Brugglestein of South Bend, Indiana, who, since the age of eight, has taken refuge from bullies including his father by assuming the alternate persona of an Englishman, accent and all. When his father dies under questionable circumstances, he sells the family home and moves to New York to start a new life as an Englishman. One day when he is in his thirties, he decides to follow a man he chooses at random. Crudup also portrays the man, his mother, his sister and a few other characters. It’s an interesting idea, but Cale doesn’t handle the story particularly well. A few salacious scenes are thrown in just to spice things up, even though they have little bearing on the main plot. The saving grace, to the extent there is one, is Mr. Crudup’s performance. He is good with accents and even gets to sing a little. I’m not sure whether director Leigh Silverman (Chinglish, Sweet Charity) could have done anything more to hide the weaknesses in the script. The simple set by Alexander Dodge (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder) features a wooden chair and side table on a wooden deck with a background brightly lit by Alan C. Edwards. Kaye Voyce’s costume does not call attention to itself. To me, the play came across as a pale, rather clumsy imitation of Patricia Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” Running time: one hour 20 minutes; no interimssion.