LaBute New Theater Festival (2018)

D

In 2016 the St. Louis Actors’ Studio brought six one-act plays to 59E59 Theaters for the LaBute New Theater Festival. Last year the number was down to four and this year there are only three. Unfortunately, not only has the number of plays diminished, but the quality has gone down as well. Not one of this year’s plays could be called a success, at least not by me. 

Neil LaBute’s entry, “Hate Crime,” opens the program. Perhaps to show that he is au courant on the topic of same-sex marriage, LaBute gives us a gay gloss on “Double Indemnity.” We meet two lovers, Man 1 (Chauncy Thomas) and Man 2 (Spencer Sickmann) in a hotel room where they are going over the details of their planned murder of Man 2’s older husband-to-be immediately after their upcoming wedding. Man 1, who constantly bullies Man 2, relishes the details of the brutal murder, which will be disguised as a gay-bashing.

In “Winter Break” by James Haigney, we meet three members of an Episcopalian family. Daughter Johanna (Kelly Schaschl), who has recently converted to Islam and renamed herself Aisha, is about to leave for Turkey where she plans to spend 2 1/2 weeks studying with a Sufi mystic. Her mother Kitty (Autumn Dornfeld) tries to respect her daughter’s choices, but is fearful enough to beg her not to go. Her gay older brother Bailey (Sickmann) is an Islamophobe who, fearing that she is a prime recruitment target for jihadist groups, questions whether she really intends to return from Turkey. The situation is believable, but the arguments are a bit circular. Nevertheless, I found this the best of the three.

“Percentage America” by Carter W. Lewis is the most ambitious play, but unfortunately trips over its attempts at satire. Andrew (Thomas) and Arial (Dornfeld), having met through an online dating site, are having their first date at Arial’s Washington, D.C. apartment. (That a woman would make her home the location for a blind date seemed unlikely to me.) After confessing to several liberties in their online profiles, they become intoxicated with the power of truth. At Arial’s suggestion, they decide to play a game whereby they “decipher” a news story by comparing how it is presented by various media, finding the most likely version and stripping away loaded adjectives to get to the verifiable truth. Somehow this game has an aphrodisiac effect on them. The story they decide to investigate involves an encounter between the president and a teenage girl (Schaschl) in the Rose Garden. The way it is treated by various media outlets of course reflects their biases. What the couple think they discover alarms them and raises questions about the cost of pursuing the truth. The concept is promising, but the treatment is clumsy and the play is twice as long as it should be. 

It is disheartening to think that these are the three best plays they could find for this year’s festival. The acting could best be described as competent. I was surprised that the male actors had to do double duty as stagehands between plays. The set design by Patrick Huber is simple and the costumes by Carla Landis Evans are unremarkable. John Pierson directed. Running time: one hour 40 minutes including intermission.

Miles for Mary

B

This is the first offering in a new initiative by Playwrights Horizons — the Redux Series, which will remount well-received off-off-Broadway plays deemed worthy of a larger audience. The Mad Ones, a five-person New York company “dedicated to creating visceral, ensemble-driven, highly detailed theatrical experiences that examine and illuminate American nostalgia,” premiered this work in 2016 at the Bushwick Starr. The play is set in the phys ed faculty’s office of Garrison High School in Garrison, Ohio from 1988 to 1989. Five faculty members, including three coaches, the AV guy and the AP English teacher, are gathered to begin planning the ninth annual Miles for Mary telethon to raise money for scholarships. A sixth committee member, absent for unspecified reasons, joins the proceedings via a balky speakerphone. The telethon is a memorial to a talented student athlete who was killed in an auto accident. The play basically consists of moments from this committee’s meetings over the course of a year. Along the way, we learn bits and pieces about the teachers and their relationships. The meetings are a hilarious case study in group dynamics run amok. Psychobabble is the lingua franca. Techniques that might serve teachers well in the classroom are not so successful when applied to each other. After a long, slow buildup, one of the teachers has a spectacular meltdown. There is much to enjoy here. The writing by Marc Bovino, Joe Curnutte, Michael Dalto, Lila Neugebauer (dir. The Wolves, The Antipodes) and Stephanie Wright Thompson, in collaboration with Sarah Lunnie and the creative ensemble of Amy Staats and Stacey Yen, negotiates a delicate balance between realism and satire. The ensemble (all the above minus director Neugebauer and dramaturg Lunnie) is flawless. The scenic design by Amy Rubin (All the Fine Boys) and the costumes by Asta Bennie Hostetter (Men on Boats, Fulfillment Center) recreate the look of the period down to the smallest detail. It’s all well-observed and often amusing, but becomes repetitive after a while. “Do More” may be the committee’s motto, but no one is quite sure what “more” means. As one teacher observes, sometimes less is more. Running time: one hour 55 minutes; no intermission.

Hindle Wakes

B-

Once again, Mint Theater’s artistic director Jonathan Banks has rediscovered an interesting British play from the early 20th century and given it a first-rate production. The playwright is Stanley Houghton, a Manchester theater critic turned author who died tragically at 32 only a year after this play brought him wide acclaim in 1912. The play combines family drama, social criticism, ethical and moral dilemmas, satire and a dash of feminism. It reminded me a bit of Shaw minus much of the wit. When the mill owner’s spoiled son Alan (Jeremy Beck) is caught out after a weekend fling with mill hand Fanny (Rebecca Noelle Brinkley), whose father Christopher (Ken Marks) is an old friend of Alan’s father Nathaniel (Jonathan Hogan), everyone — from Fanny’s mother (Sandra Shipley) to Alan’s mother (Jill Tanner) to Alan’s fiancee Beatrice (Emma Geer) and her wealthy father Sir Timothy (Brian Reddy) — has an opinion about what Alan should do. Shouldn’t Fanny have a say in the matter? Stay tuned. The production has been lovingly staged with an attractive set by Charles Morgan, excellent costumes by Sam Fleming, impressive dialect work by Amy Stoller and smooth direction by Gus Kaikkonen. It’s slow moving and the accents can be a bit challenging, but if you have a taste for well-produced neglected plays, you will be rewarded. About the title, “Hindle” is the name of the imaginary Lancastrian town where the play is set. “Wakes” refers to Wakes Week, a now-vanished custom whereby the local industry closed down for a summer week so everyone could go on holiday. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including intermission.

Mankind

D

If only I had left Robert O’Hara’s new play at Playwrights Horizons at intermission, I would have had a pleasant but abbreviated evening. Until that point, the satire had remained relatively sharp and focused and there was a sense that the play had reached its logical conclusion. Unfortunately, after a mood-breaking fifteen minutes, the play resumed and ran steadily downhill for another 45 minutes. O’Hara’s initial premise of an oppressive society where women have become extinct and men have developed the ability to bear children is a promising one. In a nice twist, abortion is still illegal, so when sex buddies Mark (Anson Mount) and Jason (Bobby Moreno; Grand Concourse, Fulfillment Center) seek one after Jason’s surprise pregnancy, they are arrested for attempted murder. When Jason gives birth to the first female born in a century, he and Mark unwittingly become founders of a new feminist religion with rituals highly reminiscent of Roman Catholicism. O’Hara takes potshots at patriarchy, talk shows, materialism, climate change, organized religion, feminism and the innate intolerance of mankind. I wish his inventiveness were coupled with more discipline. The satire generates surprisingly few laughs and rapidly becomes tedious. Four other actors — David Ryan Smith, Ariel Shafir, Stephen Schnetzer (Oslo) and scene-stealer Andre de Shields (The Wiz, The Full Monty) — play multiple roles. Clint Ramos (Bella, Familiar) has designed an overcomplicated set with a revolving platform and modules that are pushed this way and that. Dede M. Ayite’s (School Girls, The Royale) ecclesiastical garb is funnier than most of the dialog. Once again, O’Hara demonstrates why playwrights (with rare exceptions) should not direct their own work. “Barbecue,” with another director, was considerably more rewarding than either “Bootycandy” or this play. It was a frustrating evening of missed opportunities. Running time: 2 hours including intermission.

2017 in Review

Gotham Playgoer in 2017 

Excellent (A)

Hello Dolly!

Jitney

Sweeney Todd

Very Good (A-)

Derren Brown: Secret

A Doll’s House, Part 2

The Hairy Ape 

Invincible 

The Liar 

The Little Foxes

Mary Jane

A Parallelogram

School Girls 

Torch Song

Good (B+)

Come from Away 

Cost of Living

Describe the Night

The Government Inspector

Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train

Junk

Kim’s Convenience

Once on This Island

Pacific Overtures

The Price 

Prince of Broadway

The Profane

Small World

Summer Shorts A

Terms of My Surrender

(B)

Bright Colors & Bold Patterns

Fucking A

Gently Down the Stream

If I Forget

Iphigenia in Splott

Latin History for Morons

Of Human Bondage

On the Exhale

Pipeline

Rotterdam

Sunset Boulevard

Time and the Conways

(B-)

Baghdaddy  

Groundhog Day

How To Transcend a Happy Marriage

Linda

Marvin’s Room

The Parisian Woman

Pride and Prejudice

Significant Other

Six Degrees of Separation

Sojourners & Her Portmanteau

Summer Shorts B

The Treasurer

Too Heavy for Your Pocket

Fair (C+)

After the Blast

Bella: An American Tall Tale

Inanimate

M. Butterfly

The Children

Harry Clarke

The Rape of the Sabine Women…

(C)

Bandstand

Charm

The Glass Menagerie

Hundred Days

In the Blood

Kid Victory

The Last Match

Man from Nebraska

The Moors

The Play That Goes Wrong

The Suitcase under the Bed

20th Century Blues

War Paint

Yen

(C-)

Animal

The Antipodes

Bull in a China Shop

Can You Forgive Her

Everybody

Fulfillment Center

The Gospel According to…

My Eyes Went Dark

The Portuguese Kid

The Traveling Lady

Poor (D+)

The End of Longing

Evening at the Talk House

The Light Years 

On the Shore of the Wide World

(D)

Ernest Shackleton Loves Me 

For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday

Illyria

The Mother of Invention 

Office Hour

The Penitent

(D-)

Wakey, Wakey

Abominable (F)

All the Fine Boys

The Children

C+

Manhattan Theatre Club has brought this highly praised Royal Court Theatre production of Olivier award-winning playwright Lucy Kirkwood’s dystopian drama to Broadway. After a Fukushima-like disaster has rendered their home uninhabitable, retired nuclear engineers Robin (Ron Cook) and Hazel (Deborah Findlay; Top Girls) have retreated to a cottage on the English coast where they strive to maintain a semblance of normalcy. When they receive a surprise visit from Rose (Francesca Annis), who worked with them at the nuclear plant down the road almost 40 years ago, they are puzzled by the reasons for her visit. Is she there to rekindle an adulterous affair with Robin or does she have a more ominous purpose? Why does the childless Rose express so much interest in their children? All will eventually be revealed but at a pace that was much too glacial for my taste. I found the changes of tone from humor to drama to a dance number and back irritating. The three actors are superb but the relationship of their characters seemed trivial next to the larger theme of their obligation to future generations. If seeing fine British actors in their prime is enough for you, you will enjoy yourself. If you need a spare, tightly-knit, well-integrated piece, you won’t.  Miriam Buether (A Doll’s House, Part 2) designed the set and costumes. James Macdonald (Top Girls, Cloud Nine) directed. Running time: one hour 45 minutes; no intermission.

Describe the Night

B+

Atlantic Theater Company is presenting the New York premiere of Rajiv Joseph’s (Guards at the Taj, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo) play that blends fact and fiction, realism and surrealism in an intricate story covering the period between 1920 and 2010 in Russia, Poland and East Germany. With only eight characters, it may not qualify as an epic but it is certainly an ambitious and complex work. Four of the leading characters are based on historical figures: famed Russian writer Isaac Babel (Danny Burstein), Soviet Secret Police chief Nikolai Yezhov (Zach Grenier), Yezhov’s wife Yevgenia (Tina Benko) and an ambitious young KGB agent nicknamed Vova (Max Gordon Moore). Babel and Yezhov meet in Poland in 1920 and become unlikely friends. Sparks fly when Babel meets Yevgenia. We also meet Feliks (Stephen Stocking), a car rental agent, and Mariya (Nadia Bowers; The Farnsworth Invention), a journalist, who are witnesses to the mysterious plane crash in 2010 that wiped out most of the Polish government. Mrs. Petrovna (Bowers again) is Mariya’s landlady. Urzula (Rebecca Naomi Jones; Marie and Rosetta, Big Love) is a young East German singer who wants to escape to the West in 1989. The playwright follows the basic facts of the relationship between Babel and the Yezhovs fairly closely up to 1940, but puts his own fantastical spin on the Yezhovs’ fate. The story jumps around in time and place and challenges the audience to follow along. There are scenes that are quite dramatic, others that are very funny and a few that don’t have much impact but are necessary to connect the dots. The title of the play comes from Babel’s direction to himself in his writing journal. The travels of this journal over 90 years form the backbone of the play. To say more about the plot would risk spoiling the pleasure of discovery. Zach Grenier (33 Variations, Storefront Church), Tina Benko (The Crucible, Scenes from a Marriage) and Max Gordon Moore (Indecent, Man from Nebraska) are a pleasure to watch. While I admire Danny Burstein (Fiddler on the Roof, Golden Boy) for his willingness to take risks, he seems miscast here. The main design feature of the set by Tim Mackabee (The Penitent, Guards at the Taj) remains unused for most of the play. The period costumes by Amy Clark (Chaplin) are excellent. Giovanna Sardelli (Animals out of Paper) directs with a sure hand. While I found the play intellectually satisfying, it did not engage me fully at the emotional level. The characters seem more like pieces of a puzzle than individuals worthy of empathy. Nevertheless, it offers a stimulating theatrical experience. Running time: two hours 55 minutes including two intermissions.