Apologia

B

If you are a Stockard Channing fan like me, you will enjoy this 2009 play by Alexi Kaye Campbell (Pride), which was revived for her in London last year and has now landed in New York at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre. In my opinion, no one plays a smart, sharp-tongued woman of a certain age better than Ms. Channing (Other Desert Cities, Six Degrees of Separation, A Day in the Life of Joe Egg). In this instance, she plays Kristin Miller, a renowned art historian and social activist who fled the U.S. for London when she was 20 and has never looked back. At her country cottage, she is celebrating her birthday with a dinner for her two adult sons — the composed international banker Peter (Hugh Dancy; Venus in Fur, Journey’s End) and the emotionally fragile would-be writer Simon (also played by Dancy); Peter’s girlfriend Trudi (Talene Monahon; Bobbie Clearly, Log Cabin), a perky earnest Christian from Nebraska whom Kristin has not met before; Simon’s girlfriend Claire (Megalyn Echikunwoke), a stunning television actress with whom he has been living for over a year; and Kristin’s longtime gay best friend Hugh (John Tillinger, best known as director of plays by Orton, McNally, Gurney and Miller). The facts that the oven is not working and that Simon has not arrived bode ill for what turns out to be a worthy entry in any “Dinner party from Hell” contest. Kristin does not approve of her gifts — an African mask from Peter and Trudy and a beauty cream from Claire. Only Hugh’s gift of an old photograph of a youthful protest pleases her. An innocent question by Trudi about why Kristin chose Giotto as her favorite artist elicits a long, showy monologue. Kristin has recently published a memoir, entitled Apologia, about her career, in which she has not even mentioned her sons, an omission that pains them both. We learn that when they were 7 and 9, their father essentially kidnapped them, but Kristin made no attempt to get them back. Emotions boil over and everyone goes to bed. In the middle of the night Simon arrives, his left hand injured by broken glass from a fall. As Kristin tends his wounds, he torments her with a drawn-out story about what happened the night she failed to pick him up at the Genoa train station when he was 13. He says that his main childhood memory of her is her absence. In the morning, after all her guests have left, Kristin is forced to confront the consequences of her choices. As a showcase for Ms. Channing’s prodigious talents, the play succeeds. If, however, you start to look at things too closely, there are many flaws — contrivances such as identical cellphones, cliches such as a wise-cracking gay friend, gimmicks such as double-casting, borrowings such as the scene between Simon and Kristin which strongly recalls one in The Seagull, improbabilities such as Simon and Claire being a pair, and omissions such as information about her late husband and the reasons he took their sons away. As a serious consideration of whether a woman can have it all, it breaks no new ground. Nevertheless, the opportunity to see Ms. Channing in action definitely outweighs all these shortcomings for me. The other actors are fine as well. Dane Laffrey’s (Once on the Island, Bad Jews) set is cozy and appropriately book-filled. Anita Yavich’s (Venus in Fur, The Legend of Georgia McBride) costumes, especially Claire’s dress, are very good. Daniel Aukin’s (Skintight, Admissions) direction is unfussy. If Ms. Channing is a draw for you, you will be content. Running time: two hours 15 minutes including intermission.

Operation Crucible

B+

When it played at 59E59 Theaters last Spring as part of the Brits Off Broadway festival, this taut World War II drama about the bombing of Sheffield in December 1940 was selected as a Critic’s Pick. Now it is receiving an encore run at The Loft at the Davenport Theatre. The four blokes we meet are workmates at a steel mill that supplies armaments critical to the British war effort. Their strenuous work requires tightly coordinated teamwork which we see them perform. We learn about their daily routines and their lives away from work. The frequent German air raids had not targeted Sheffield until that horrendous evening when the sirens tell them to flee the factory. They head homeward, but only get as far as the local hotel where they take shelter in the basement. When a bomb hits the hotel, it collapses around them and they are trapped in a pitch-black tiny space hoping to be rescued. We learn what memories and worries each man is thinking of during the crisis. The cast (Salvatore D’Aquila; Kieran Knowles, who also wrote the play; Christopher McCurry and James Wallwork) are superb individually and as a team. Their ensemble work is brilliant. Bryony Shanahan’s tight direction adds much to the production. The simple set and costumes by Sophia Simensky are apt. Seth Rook Williams’s low lighting is effective and Daniel Foxsmith’s sound design is appropriately ominous. The only negative, and it is not a serious one, is that the thick Sheffield accent is occasionally hard to decipher. The program contains a helpful glossary of local terms. The play's title is a translation of the German's name for their bombing campaign against Sheffield.There has been so little publicity for the reopening of the play that the audience was unfortunately quite sparse. I hope word of mouth changes that. Running time: one hour 20 minutes, no intermission.

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

D+

The election of our current president has led to a glut of productions of this parable of fascism and corruption during the rise of Hitler; this version at Classic Stage Company is the fourth in New York this year. Since my track record with Brecht is not good — I will admit somewhat shamefacedly that I have never really enjoyed a Brecht play — it was probably a mistake for me even to get a ticket. However, hope springs eternal and I was curious to see what CSC director John Doyle would do with the play and how Raul Esparza (Company, The Homecoming) an actor I have always enjoyed, would fare in the title role. I should have stayed home. I found the production wanting in just about every respect. First there is the play itself. I did not think transposing Hitler’s rise to the story of a gangster fighting for control of the Chicago cauliflower trust was an apt metaphor. Lest we miss the connections, an announcer bursts in periodically to tell us what event in Germany corresponds to what is happening onstage. Secondly I had a problem with George Tabori’s translation, which alternated between stilted verse and gangster talk. Thirdly, I was puzzled by Doyle’s ugly set which fences off the back of the stage to represent some vague industrial space with workmen’s lockers, helmets hanging on the wall and bright lights shined at the audience periodically. (Regular readers of this blog know how I feel about shining bright lights in the audience’s eyes.) The actors periodically drag chairs and folding tables from this back room to and from the main performing space. The costumes by Ann Hould-Ward (Passion, Allegro) offered little help in defining the characters. I never did figure out why actors donned welder’s helmets from time to time. The quality of the acting varied. I thought Eddie Cooper (This Ain't No Disco) as Roma and Christopher Gurr (All the Way) as Dogsboro/Dullfeet stood out. The other actors were George Abud (The Band's Visit), Elizabeth A. Davis (Allegro), Omozé Idehenre, Mahira Kakkar (The Winter's Tale) and Thom Sesma (Pacific Overtures). As for Raul Esparza, he coped reasonably well with a role that was not a natural fit. The first act builds rather slowly. In my favorite scene, Ui hires an actor to teach him how to walk, talk and sit. After intermission, the audience was a bit smaller. The mood darkens in the second act and we start hearing faint recorded shouts of “Sieg Heil!” in the background. The transformation of this shout to “Lock her up!” in the final moments was about as subtle as a sledgehammer. While a cautionary tale about how fascism develops is certainly welcome today, I don’t feel this is a very effective one. Running time: two hours five minutes including intermission. NOTE: CSC no longer distributes paper programs so you may want to download the digital version on your smartphone before you arrive.

WIld Goose Dreams

B-
While the new play by Hansol Jung now at the Public Theater is a co-production with La Jolla Playhouse, the two theaters have apparently taken quite different approaches to the work. While the La Jolla production had a very simple set, the Public has totally reconfigured its Martinson Theater to suggest Seoul, with a technicolor extravaganza of neon signs, backlit posters and photographs, a hot pink catwalk and audience crossover and a two-tiered stage with numerous popups and hidden doors. We also have a mod Greek chorus (Dan Domingues, Lulu Fall, Kendyl Ito, Jaygee Macapugay, Joel Perez, Jamar Williams and Katrina Yaukey) singing binary code, internet messages and emoticons. All of this is allegedly in service of the tender love story of two lonely people who meet online, Guk Minsung (Peter Kim; Yellow Face, Kung Fu), a “goose father” who stayed behind in Seoul to fund a better life for the wife and daughter he sent to America, and Yoo Nanhee (Michelle Krusiec; Chinglish), a young woman who fled North Korea four years before, who is troubled by dreams and visions of the father (Francis Jue; Yellow Face, Kung Fu) she left behind. The problem for me was that all the lavish ancillary bells and whistles practically smothered the main event. While I was often entertained by the latest surprise in Clint Ramos’s (Eclipsed, Barbecue) set, Linda Cho's (The Lifespan of a Fact, Anastasia) clever costumes and the inventive direction of Leigh Silverman (The Lifespan of a Fact, Chinglish), I felt that they somehow diminished the central story. There were occasions when it was confusing to know what was transpiring. My favorite moments were the quieter ones when there was less attempt to grab attention. Francis Jue steals every scene he is in. Ms. Krusiec seemed a bit subdued. Mr. Kim was fine, but a bit too young and too handsome for his role. The chorus members were an entertaining lot. While I did not enjoy some of what was presented, I was certainly never bored. Running time: one hour 50 minutes, no intermission.

Lewiston/Clarkston

B- (Lewiston C+/Clarkston B+)

These two separate but thematically related plays by Samuel D. Hunter (The Whale, Pocatello) are being presented together for the first time at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Each involves a descendant of Lewis and Clark trying to find meaning by retracing the steps of their forefathers. Both have a scene set on the Fourth of July. 

In the first play, Lewiston, we meet Alice (Kristin Griffith; Animal, Da), a crusty older woman who has sold off most of the ranch that had been in the family since 1850 and is barely hanging on. The few dollars she earns from her roadside fireworks stand are supplemented by the Walgreens earnings of her 50-ish closeted roommate Connor (Arnie Burton; The 39 Steps, Machinal). She is planning to sell her remaining land to the developers of Meriwether Terrace, the condo estate going up next door. The unexpected arrival of her estranged granddaughter Marnie (Leah Karpel; The Harvest, Pocatello), whom she has not seen in over 15 years, disrupts these plans. The abrasive, condescending Marnie has sold her share of an urban farm in Seattle and wants to buy what’s left of the family property. Marnie likes to play the tapes her late mother recorded during her hike following Lewis and Clark’s steps to the Pacific. The three reach some kind of equilibrium. I found the characters less fully developed than I would have liked and their motivations less than clear. 

For the second play, Clarkston, Hunter, affectionately nicknamed the Bard of Boise because all his plays are set in Idaho, actually moves the setting across the border to Washington State. Jake (the ever youthful Noah Robbins; Brighton Beach Memoirs, “Master Harold”…and the Boys), a distant descendant of William Clark, is a recent arrival in town who has taken a job as night stock boy in the local Costco where he is being shown the ropes by Chris (Edmund Donovan; The Snow Geese), an amiable employee also in his 20’s. After graduating Bennington with a major in post-colonial gender studies, the privileged Jake has suddenly left home to follow the historic trail to the Pacific. He has stopped short of his goal to earn some money before pushing on to the ocean. Jake tells Chris that he has recently been diagnosed with early Huntington’s disease which will probably kill him before he reaches 30 and shortly after his diagnosis was dumped by his boyfriend. It turns out that Chris is furtively gay and the two begin a relationship of sorts. We next meet Chris’s mother Trish (Heidi Armbruster; Time Stands Still, Disgraced), an allegedly recovering meth addict, from whom Chris has desperately been trying to cut the cord. The climactic confrontation between mother and son is gut-wrenching. Chris and Jake find a way to comfort each other, at least for the time being.

As usual, Hunter is very compassionate toward his characters, all of whom must struggle for freedom, whether economic or sexual or from addiction. His look at life in the new West is a bleak one.

For this production, Rattlestick has gutted the theater. Dane Laffrey (Once on This Island) has designed two different performance spaces. For the first play, the audience of 51 sits on three sides of the action with a fireworks stand on the fourth. For the second, seating is in two longer facing rows with Costco shelves on both short sides. The costumes by Jessica Wegener Shay (A Kid Like Jake) are appropriate to the characters. The actors are all superb and are so close that you can practically touch them, a proximity that magnifies your connection. Between plays, the audience shares a communal meal during the 45-minute break. You can order barbecued chicken or tofu or bring your own food.

At three hours 45 minutes, it’s a very long evening, especially sitting on barely padded metal chairs. I felt that the direction by Davis McCallum (Pocatello, The Whale) was more than a little sluggish. Each play is 90 minutes, a full evening by today’s standards. I would have preferred skipping Lewiston and just seeing Clarkston, which I felt was clearly the better play.

American Son

B-

Lest we take unwarranted comfort in the belief that events like the one underlying this harrowing drama are safely in the past, playwright Christopher Demos-Brown has specified the time of this play as “shortly after 4:00 AM on a day this coming June.” In the waiting room of a Miami police station on a stormy night, Kendra (Kerry Washington; Race, “Scandal”), an African-American psychology professor, is frantic with worry over the whereabouts of her 18-year-old son Jamal, whose car has been involved in an unspecified police incident. She is not getting any answers from passive-aggressive Officer Paul Larkin (Jeremy Jordan; Newsies) whose inexperience leads him to cling to protocol by telling her that she must await the arrival of Lt. John Spokes (Eugene Lee; A Soldier’s Play), the public affairs officer, for further details. They engage in an unproductive shouting match which has a few ironically humorous moments. When her estranged husband Scott (Stephen Pasquale; Junk, The Bridges of Madison County), a white FBI agent, arrives, sporting a badge on his belt, Larkin mistakes him for Stokes, unlikely as that may seem, and lets loose a barrage of sexist, racist remarks. Scott is used to getting his way and reacts badly to being obstructed. The arrival of Stokes surprises them all because he is black, a hard-nosed realist who takes no guff from anyone. We learn about Jamal’s sterling qualities, his promising future and his bad reaction to his parents’ split. Although we get a glimpse of what initially attracted Kendra and Scott, their constant disagreement on just about everything makes it hard to imagine their marriage could have lasted 18 years. The action takes place in real time. The tension steadily builds until the sudden shattering climax. It’s a play that grabs your attention and never lets go. What it lacks in artistry and subtlety, it makes up for in audience involvement. The choice of a story about a mixed-race son may add dimension to the plot, but the distinction between mixed-race and black is not significant to the police. The acting is uniformly strong. The set by Derek McLane (The Parisian Woman) looks too modern and plush. It is hard to believe that it is part of a station that still has two water fountains left over from segregation days. The costumes by Dede Ayite (School Girls, Children of a Lesser God) are apt. The direction by Kenny Leon (A Raisin in the Sun, Fences) is brisk. Without Kerry Washington’s participation, it probably would not have made it to Broadway. That would have been a shame. Running time: 85 minutes, no intermission.

The Ferryman

A

I was going to skip this London import by Jez Butterworth because I did not care for his much-praised 2011 play Jerusalem at all (https://gotham-playgoer.blogspot.com/2011/04/jerusalem.html). However, the reports from London were so enthusiastic that I relented and bought a ticket. I’m very glad I did. I found it so compelling that its three-plus hours absolutely flew by. The seamless blend of the personal with the political, the comic with the dramatic, the leisurely storytelling with the sudden shocks give it almost Shakespearean proportions. After a brief prologue set in Derry a day or two before the rest of the play, the action takes place in the oversized farmhouse kitchen of the Carney family in rural Northern Ireland. In addition to Quinn (Paddy Considine), Mary (Genevieve O’Reilly) and their seven children — JJ (Niall Wright), Michael (Fra Fee), Sheena (Carla Langley), Nunu (Brooklyn Shuck), Honor (Matilda Lawler), Mercy (Willow McCarthy) and infant Bobby (Annie Scarfuto). the household includes Quinn’s two aunts — acerbic Aunt Pat (Dearbhla Molloy) and befogged Aunt Maggie Far Away (Fionnula Flanagan) — and tippling Uncle Pat  (Mark Lambert) as well as Quinn’s sister-in-law Caitlin (Laura Donnelly) who moved in with her young son Oisin (Rob Malone) when her husband Seamus mysteriously disappeared ten years before. Tom Kettle (Justin Edwards), a developmentally challenged English foundling, lives in a cottage on the farm. We also meet Quinn’s cousins, the three Corcoran brothers — Shane (Tom Glynn-Carney), Diarmaid (Conor MacNeill) and Declan (Michael Quinton McArthur) —who are helping with the harvest, the parish priest Father Horrigan (Charles Dale) and an IRA bigwig Muldoon (Stuart Graham) with two henchmen (Dean Ashton and Glenn Spears). There are also a live goose and a rabbit. It is one of Butterworth’s great achievements that he makes almost every character a vivid, memorable presence. The plot revolves around the sudden appearance of Seamus’s body and the IRA’s ruthless attempt to assure that the Carney family does not publicly lay blame for his death on them. Fortunately for us, the playwright never hesitates to pause for a good tale, a dance or a song. The mostly British cast is so universally strong that I hesitate to single any one out for special mention. The scenic and costume design by Rob Howell is topnotch. Director Sam Mendes never lets our attention lag. The play is one of the major events of the season thus far. Running time: three hours 15 minutes including an intermission and a brief pause.