To Kill a Mockingbird

B+

I must confess that I thought it was a terrible idea to turn Harper Lee’s classic novel into a Broadway play starring Jeff Daniels (Blackbird, God of Carnage, “The Newsroom”). The film version is so indelibly lodged in people’s consciousness that it did not seem possible for a stage version to compete, even with a script by Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, “The West Wing”). While I have admired much of Daniels’s work, he’s not Gregory Peck. My doubts grew when I heard that the roles of the three children would be played by adults, a practice I generally detest. I am happy to report that my qualms were mostly misplaced. While Sorkin’s script hews closely to the film in most respects (It’s been so long since I read it that I can’t comment on how closely it adheres to the novel), the changes he makes are mostly improvements. The roles of Calpurnia, Dill and the judge have been expanded, to good effect. A new character, the town drunk Link Deas (a touching Neal Huff; The Iceman Cometh), has been introduced, with his own tragic tale of the dire consequences of an interracial marriage. A few scenes from early in the film, such as Scout’s first day at school, have been left out without serious harm. Even allowing for the fact that the actors playing them are adults, the children seem a few years older than in the novel. This makes dramatic sense because the three, mainly Scout, narrate the story. The level of the acting is superb; even small roles have been cast with fine actors. Daniels is solid, but no match for my memory of Peck. Celia Keenan-Bolger (The Glass Menagerie, A Parallelogram) is superb as Scout. Will Pullen (Sweat, Punk Rock) is fine as her brother Jem. LaTanya Richardson Jackson (A Raisin in the Sun) makes Calpurnia a good sparring partner for Atticus. Gideon Glick (Significant Other) is the wrong physical type for Dill (allegedly based on Truman Capote) but brings out his sensitivity well. Stark Sands (Kinky Boots) plays against type as the racist prosecutor Horace Gilmer. Frederick Weller (Mothers and Sons, Glengarry Glen Ross) is an appropriately sinister Bob Ewell. Erin Wilhelmi (The Crucible) is excellent as his daughter Mayella. Phyllis Somerville (Over Here, “The Big C”) is fine as the acerbic Mrs. Henry Dubose. Dakin Matthews (The Iceman Cometh) as the judge and Danny McCarthy (The Iceman Cometh) as the sheriff are both effective. Gbenga Akinnagbe (A View from 151st Street) is a quietly forceful Tom Robinson. In an interesting casting move, Danny Wolohan (The Low Road, The Flick) successfully plays both Mr. Cunningham and Boo Radley. Liv Rooth (Is He Dead?, All in the Timing) doubles as Dill’s mother and Miss Stephanie. The fluid staging is greatly enhanced by Miriam Buether’s (Three Tall Women) wonderful set that rapidly transforms between locations. The period costumes by Ann Roth (The Nance) are also fine. A few of the changes play to current sensibilities: the jury’s verdict is much quicker and a police shooting is much more violent. The jury’s seats remain empty, as if to lead us to project ourselves into them. Although Atticus is still very much at the center, the play works more as an ensemble piece than a character study. Bartlett Sher (My Fair Lady, The King and I) directs the large cast with consummate skill. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised how well this stage version turned out. Running time: two hours 35 minutes including intermission.

The Hello Girls

A-

How grateful I am that a knowledgeable friend urged me to see this thoroughly satisfying chamber musical now at 59E59 Theater A. I had never heard of Prospect Theater Company and knew nothing about the historical footnote on which the show is based, i.e. the experience of American women recruited by the U.S. Army to serve as telephone operators in France in World War I, so I had not planned to see it. To miss it would have been a great shame. The show has been crafted with unusual skill. The music by Peter Mills is varied and often catchy, his lyrics are intelligent and the songs are well-integrated into the ambitious book by Mills and Cara Reichel. The attractive young cast of ten is simply amazing. They not only sing, dance and act; they play instruments (with one exception) and speak French. The story, based on actual people, focuses on Grace Banker (Ellie Fishman), a skilled Bell Telephone operator who is persuaded by her adventurous friend Suzanne (Skyler Volpe, guitar) to apply for the job. As the most experienced of the lot, she is chosen to head the unit, which includes Bertha (Lili Thomas, brass & piano), a married woman who doesn’t want to stay home while her husband is fighting overseas; Louise (Cathryn Wake, clarinet), a saucy French immigrant who wants to help her native country; and Helen (Chanel Karimkhani, cello), a sensitive young girl from a large Iowa farm family. Grace’s nemesis is Lt. Riser (Arlo Hill, percussion), who has been assigned oversight of the unit against his will and has no sympathy for the operation. Private Matterson (Matthew McGloin, accordion & piano) is a flirty soldier attached to the unit. We also meet General Pershing (Scott Wakefield, bass), who values the unit’s work. Andrew Mayer and Ben Moss portray various soldiers and play a mean piano. There is also an offstage percussionist, Elena Bonomo. The energetic choreography by Christine O’Grady makes effective use of a small space. The multilevel wood set design by Lianne Arnold has a lot of pegboard panels, some used for projections. The period costumes, mostly uniforms, by Whitney Locher are evocative. The fluid direction by Prospect’s producing artistic director Cara Reichel is a great asset. On the 100th anniversary of the armistice, it seems fitting to give these trailblazing women the recognition they deserve but were denied until 1977. My only criticism is that there is perhaps too much of a good thing. Trimming it by ten or fifteen minutes might be an improvement. There is so much to admire here that I hope some clever producer finds an off-Broadway house for the show after it closes December 22.  Running time: two hours 25 minutes, including intermission.

Thom Pain (based on nothing)

C

It has been 13 years since playwright Will Eno (The Open House, The Realistic Joneses) took New York by storm with this extended monologue that received an ecstatic review from then Times critic Charles Isherwood, who described it as “stand-up existentialism” and dubbed Eno “a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation.” The play became a hot ticket, a Pulitzer contender, and the topic of heated arguments at cocktail parties. I was not one of its fans, but could not resist Signature Theatre’s revival because the star Michael C. Hall (The Realistic Joneses, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, “Dexter”) is an actor whose work I have long admired. Knowing more or less what to expect this time around, I could relax and enjoy a fine actor at work without a sense of disappointment at the play’s circularities and teases. The script reminds me of the comic “Peanuts,” with Lucy repeatedly pulling the ball before Charlie Brown can kick it. Thom repeatedly promises the audience something and then abruptly retracts it or begins a story that he never finishes. Clearly in pain, he alternately charms and alienates the audience. Fragments from his life story including a childhood trauma and a failed romance give a few clues as to the reasons for his state of mind. Lodged amidst the self-laceration and passive aggression are some very funny bits. Michael C. Hall has more charm and less menace than I recall from James Urbaniak’s 2005 performance, which takes some edge off the play. I question Signature’s decision to put it on their largest stage, because it needs intimacy to have its full effect. From the third row, I saw nuances that may have been lost several rows back. The set by Amy Rubin (Miles for Mary) turns the stage and large parts of the theater into a construction site, complete with ladders, tarps, a scaffold, and an onstage excavation. The relevance of this concept to the play is questionable at best. For me, it was one more example of what seems to be a trend this season — overloading a play with dubious visual distractions such as the set for Good Grief and the furniture-moving chorus in The Hard Problem. Did director Oliver Butler (The Open House, What the Constitution Means to Me) not trust that the play itself was enough to hold our interest? If the thought of a rambling 65-minute rant does not appeal to you, skip it. If you are a Michael C. Hall fan, you’ll want to catch it.

Slave Play

A-

Jeremy O. Harris certainly qualifies as this season’s hot young playwright. In addition to this work at New York Theatre Workshop, he has a second play, Daddy, coproduced by The New Group and Vineyard Theatre, coming up in February. He was a MacDowell Colony Fellow and has been commissioned by both Lincoln Center Theater and Playwrights Horizons. The current play has already won the 2018 Kennedy Center Rosa Parks Playwriting Award and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award. Not bad for someone in his second year at Yale School of Drama. 

This is a difficult review to write because to tell you too much about the play would be to spoil much of the pleasurable surprise I hope you will experience seeing it. I can say that it involves interracial sex and is not just sexy, but also hilarious, provocative and highly theatrical. The setting is specified as MacGregor Plantation in Virginia. The play has three acts performed without a break. In the long first act, we meet Jim (Paul Alexander Nolan; Escape to Margaritaville), a white tenant farmer on the plantation, and Kaneisha (Teyonah Parris; A Free Man of Color), the slave who is cleaning his shack. Next we meet Alana (Annie McNamara; The Sound and the Fury), the bored mistress, and Phillip (Sullivan Jones; The Winning Side), the studly mulatto house-servant/musician. Finally there are Gary (Ato Blankson-Wood; Lysistrata Jones), a black overseer, and Dustin (James Cusati-Moyer; Fire and Air), a white indentured servant whose work Gary is supervising. Things happen. After an abrupt ending, we are in the extended second act, which has an entirely different tone and casts everything we have seen so far in a new light. This act includes two new characters, Tea (Chalia La Tour; The Danger) and Patricia (Irene Sofia Lucio; Love and Information). The short dramatic final act combines elements of the previous two, but features only one of the couples. I realize this description does not give you much to go on, but trust me that it’s better not to know a lot in advance. The cast is uniformly strong. The scenic design by Cllint Ramos (Once on This Island, Torch Song) includes an astroturf stage backed by eight large mylar panels that reflect not only the audience but a painting of the plantation house on the auditorium’s back wall. The costumes by Dede Ayite (American Son, School Girls), especially Alana’s gown, are a treat. The lighting design by Jiyoun Chang adds a lot to the production. Director Robert O’Hara (Wild with Happy, Bella), whose direction of his own plays has not always been optimal, does a smooth job here, capturing the play’s many moods. I assure you that you won’t be bored, although I do feel that the long second act could use a trim. It’s not for those offended by nudity or sexual situations. Others should find it both entertaining and thought-provoking. Running time: two hours five minutes, no intermission.

Downstairs

C-

First the good news: this latest offering by Primary Stages offers the opportunity to see Tyne Daly (Gypsy, Master Class, “Cagney and Lacey”) and her brother Tim (Coastal Disturbances, “Madame Secretary”) together onstage for the first time in New York, both playing roles that cast them against type. Tim, usually a suave charmer, plays Teddy, a middle-aged man with a fragile grip on reality that may be the result of paranoia. Tyne, usually the smart, strong woman, plays Irene, a timid, depressive housewife who lives in fear of her horrible husband Gerry (John Procaccino; Our Mother’s Brief Affair, Nikolai and the Others). The bad news is that the play is by Theresa Rebeck (Bernhardt/Hamlet, Poor Behavior), a playwright whose ability to get her work produced no matter how many disappointing plays she writes never fails to amaze me. Add another disappointment to the list. Despite a interesting premise — Teddy is temporarily occupying a beat-up couch in Irene’s basement against the wishes of her tyrannical husband — the play mostly spins its wheels and dissipates what little tension it builds up well before it finally ends. If there was any point to it, it was lost on me. Despite fine performances by all three actors, I found myself losing interest and patience early on. The slack direction by Adrienne Campbell-Holt (Thirst, Zürich) didn't help either. I did like Narelle Sissons’s (All My Sons, In the Blood) meticulously detailed, dingy, unfinished basement set and Sarah Laux's (The Band's Visit, The Humans) evocative costumes. I admire the Dalys for trying something different, but wish it had turned out better. Running time: one hour 45 minutes, no intermission.

The Prom

A-

Director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw once again demonstrates the Midas touch in choosing material. To the three hits (Mean Girls, Aladdin and The Book of Mormon) he already has on Broadway, he has now added a fourth with this delightful, cannily-crafted show that puts the comedy back in musical comedy. It may recall Bye, Bye, Birdie in depicting the invasion of Middle America by show biz celebrities and also Hairspray in its theme of righting an injustice, but the end result is totally original. It is hilarious, generous and touching. When two “aging narcissists,” as the Times review calls them, Dee Dee Allen (Beth Leavel; The Drowsy Chaperone) and Barry Glickman (Brooks Ashmanskas; Something Rotten!, Bullets over Broadway), are brutally panned for their performances as Eleanor Roosevelt and FDR in the hiphop musical Eleanor, they search for a way to burnish their reputations by becoming celebrity activists. When they read on Twitter about Emma (Caitlin Kinnunen; The Bridges of Madison County), a lesbian high school student whose wish to bring her girlfriend to the prom led to the prom’s cancellation, they find their cause. Joined by their friends Angie (Angie Schworer; The Producers), a chorus girl in Chicago for 20 years, Trent Oliver (Christopher Sieber; Shrek, Spamalot), a Juilliard-trained actor/waiter who is between jobs, and their rotund PR man Sheldon Saperstein (Josh Lamon; Groundhog Day), they hitch a ride to Edgewater, Indiana with a non-Equity Godspell bus tour to lend their help to Emma, whether she wants it or not. The campaign against an inclusive prom is led by the adamant Mrs. Greene (Courtenay Collins; Eating Raoul), whose daughter Alyssa (Isabelle McCalla; Aladdin), unbeknownst to her mother, is Emma’s secret girlfriend. The school principal Mr. Hawkins (David Josefsberg; Altar Boyz, u/s for Michael Potts; Jitney) is sympathetic to Emma and is on the verge of finding a solution when the Broadway Five barge into the PTA meeting, thereby managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. There is a cruel trick played on Emma that leads to her breakup with Alyssa. A side plot is that Mr. Hawkins is a big fan of Dee Dee’s and they hit it off. I won’t go into details of the further mayhem that follows. Suffice it to say there is a terrific song for each character, the dance numbers are wonderfully energetic and the ending is touching. The sturdy book by Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone) and Chad Beguelin (Aladdin, The Wedding Singer) includes a slew of insider Broadway musical jokes to make the audience feel smart. The music by Matthew Sklar (Elf, The Wedding Singer) is catchy and the lyrics by Bequelin are often clever. Scott Pask’s (The Book of Mormon, The Band’s Visit) sets are both functional and attractive. The costumes by Ann Roth (The Nance) and Matthew Pachtman (The Book of Mormon) are wonderful. The show has been brilliantly cast. Normally I would be offended at the swishy queen stereotype represented by Barry, but Ashmanskas plays him so well that I didn’t really mind. My only complaint is that, as so often happens these days, the music was overamplified, making the lyrics occasionally hard to hear. The season gets a welcome boost from this thoroughly enjoyable show. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including intermission.

A note about color-blind (or alternative) casting: Once again I am puzzled by whether the race of an actor is meant to be significant or not. The actor who normally plays Mr. Hawkins, the school principal, is black. The night I attended, the role was played by his understudy, who is white. If the choice of a black actor was meant to be significant, it would put a certain spin on events in the play. The citizens of Edgewater could not be completely intolerant if they chose someone black as high school principal. Would it then be meaningful that the only one in town who is trying to build bridges is black? It would also add another dimension to the romance between Dee Dee and Mr. Hawkins. On the other hand, if race was not a consideration in the casting and the actor chosen was simply the best actor auditioned, then all my speculation is irrelevant. I wish I knew which. Comments, as always, are welcome.

The Hard Problem

B-

This 2015 play by Tom Stoppard (The Coast of Utopia, Arcadia, Travesties), his first in nine years, has finally reached New York in a sleek Lincoln Center Theater production directed by Jack O’Brien (The Coast of Utopia, The Little Foxes). While not among Stoppard’s best efforts, it offers much of interest. The titular problem refers to determining the nature of human consciousness. When we meet Hilary (Adelaide Clemens; Hold On to Me Darling), she is a psychology student preparing for a job interview at the Krohl Institute of Brain Science with the assistance of her tutor Spike (Chris O’Shea; The History Boys), whose interest in her is not entirely academic. They debate whether altruism is just egoism’s disguised survival mechanism. When she arrives at Krohl for her interview, she meets Amal (Eshan Bajpay: Can You Forgive Her?), a “quant” who is competing for the same job. While he is not hired by department head Leo (Robert Petkoff; All the Way, Ragtime), Amal accidentally attracts the attention of Jerry (the excellent Jon Tenney; The Heiress), the hedge fund manager who has founded the institute, and ends up being hired at the fund. Hilary also runs into former schoolmate Julia (Nina Grollman; The Iceman Cometh), who teaches Pilates to institute employees, and Julia’s lover Ursula (Tara Summers; Gypsy of Chelsea), who works there. Julia’s main function in the play is to impart the information that when she was 15 Hilary had a daughter who was immediately put up for adoption. Ursula gives Hilary advice that will improve her chances of getting the job. We see Jerry in two roles, barking mercilessly at Amal, and being solicitous to his 13-year old daughter Cathy (Katie Beth Hall). Did I mention that she’s adopted? (Wink, wink). Hilary thrives in her new job and is sent to a conference in Venice to present a paper. Spike conveniently is also there and they hook up again. Hilary hires an assistant Bo (Karoline Xu; You Across from Me) who has left the hedge fund for the institute to feel she is doing work that contributes to society. Her boyfriend is none other than Amal. Hilary throws a party to celebrate the publishing of a paper about an experiment that Bo conducted under her guidance that suggests that altruism is innate and egoism is learned. It turns out that Bo tampered with the data to get a result that would please Hilary. As a consequence of the experiment, Hilary also finds out that her prayers for her daughter’s wellbeing have been answered. What you might expect to be the climax takes plays offstage and the play ends on a very quiet note. The ongoing debates over altruism vs. selfishness, coincidence vs. miracle, brain vs. mind take precedence over plot. In addition to the principal roles, there is an ensemble of six (John Patrick Doherty, Eleanor Handley, Olivia Hebert, Sagar Kiran, Baylen Thomas and Kim Wong) whose function consists of moving sets between scenes and sitting on risers at the back of the stage watching the other actors. While David Rockwell’s (She Loves Me, The Nap) scenic design is a wonder of drop-down panoramas, pop-up beds, movable furniture, and sliding panels, it somehow seems distracting for a play that is basically about ideas. Catherine Zuber’s (My Fair Lady, Oslo) costumes are apt. O’Brien’s direction is a bit too busy for my taste. While the play never deeply engaged me, it did hold my interest. I was surprised that Ms. Clemens got a solo bow during the curtain call as her performance, while quite competent, did not reach star level. Running time: one hour 50 minutes; no intermission.