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.

Good Grief

D

It took me less than 30 seconds to take a dislike to the new play at Vineyard Theatre by Nigerian-American playwright Ngozi Anyanwu (The Homecoming Queen), who also stars. Before the play begins, thick stage fog rolls over the audience in the front rows for no apparent reason. The play’s first words are accompanied by bright lights the actors shine in people’s eyes. As the stage lights go up, we see a two-story industrial-like metal set by Jason Ardizzone-West with sliding perforated panels and fluorescent lamps that light up when characters kiss. With all these distractions, this modest memory play about a young woman immobilized by grief almost gets lost in the shuffle. Nkechi (Ms. Anyanwu) lives in Bucks County, PA with her immigrant parents Papa (Oberon K.A. Adjepong; The Homecoming Queen) and NeNe (Patrice Johnson Chevannes; The Homecoming Queen) and Bro (Nnamdi Asomugha; “Crown Heights”), the brother who has gone homeboy. We also meet two mothers, both played by Lisa Ramirez. When Nkechi’s biracial boyfriend MJ (Ian Quinlan; The Lion King) suddenly dies, she drops out of med school and retires to her room. Not even a fling with her Waspy high school crush JD (Hunter Parrish; Spring Awakening, "Weeds") gives her solace. The acting is fine except that Ms. Chevannes’s thick accent is not easy to decipher. The story is told in a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards that are sometimes hard to place in time. Ancient mythology is also drawn into the mix; Andy Jean’s (Rags Parkland) costumes for that scene are attractive. Fluorescent lights dominate the final image. Clearly, director Awoye Timpo (The Homecoming Queen) is not someone who believes less is more. For me, the excesses of the production overwhelmed this slight play. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

The Thanksgiving Play

C+

If the thought of a Saturday Night Live sketch that lasts almost an hour and a half appeals to you, you will enjoy this new play by Larissa FastHorse now at Playwrights Horizons. Logan (Jennnifer Bareilles; The Studio System), a neurotic drama teacher already in trouble with parents over her last production, The Iceman Cometh with 15-year old actors, has cobbled together enough grant money from organizations promoting noble causes to produce and direct a 45-minute play for an elementary school audience, celebrating Native American Heritage Month. The three actors she has recruited to “devise” the play are Jaxton (Greg Keller; The Amateurs, Belleville), her slacker street-performer boyfriend; Caden (Jeffrey Bean; Bells Are Ringing), a nerdy elementary teacher with a passion for historically accurate playwriting; and Alicia (Margo Seibert; Rocky), a sexy but not very bright Hollywood starlet, hired under the mistaken impression that she is Native American. Before the play opens and at a few points during, the actors perform delightfully awful Thanksgiving songs and short skits suggested as appropriate for young audiences. The bulk of the play portrays their first and possibly only rehearsal, a virtual playbook of political correctness among the “woke” that leads to increasingly absurd situations as they tie themselves in knots trying to avoid offending anyone. The characters may be stereotypes but they are marvelously realized by the four actors. The satire is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but there are some hilarious moments. A few theatrical “in” jokes are very funny. What disappointed me was that I thought a Native American playwright would offer some original insights on our November holiday that I didn’t find. I felt that the play might just as easily have been the work of a team of privileged white SNL writers. Even though I am a fan of broad satire, the play ran too long to sustain my interest. The set by Wilson Chin (Cost of Living, The Jammer) accurately recreates a high school drama classroom. The costumes by Tilly Grimes (The Government Inspector) are spot-on. Despite the best efforts of director Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Hand to God, Bernhardt/Hamlet), the play loses energy before it’s over. Running time: 85 minutes, no intermission.

Daniel's Husband

C+

It would be easy to dismiss Michael McKeever’s (Clark Gable Slept Here) play as the theatrical equivalent of a gay Lifetime movie, but it was sufficiently well-received during its recent run at Primary Stages that it has been brought back for an encore run at the Westside Theatre. Architect Daniel (Ryan Spahn; Summer and Smoke, Gloria) and gay pulp fiction author Mitchell (Matthew Montelongo; A View from the Bridge, The Ritz) are entertaining Mitchell’s older literary agent Barry (Lou Liberatore; Burn This, As Is) and his latest boy-toy Trip (Leland Wheeler), a home health care aide. Over after-dinner drinks, Trip innocently asks why Daniel and Mitchell, who have been together seven years, have not married. His question sets off a vehement tirade by Mitchell against marriage, gay assimilation and conformity. Daniel would like to marry, but Mitchell is adamant and their disagreement is a sore spot in their otherwise harmonious relationship. Another source of unease is the impending arrival of Daniel’s overbearing mother Lydia (Anna Holbrook; Raising Jo), whose visits are a cross for Daniel to bear. When catastrophe strikes, Mitchell has to pay a high price for his choices. Montelongo makes the most of this climactic moment. Brian Prather’s (Freud’s Last Session) midcentury modern living room set befits an architect. Gregory Gale’s (Rock of Ages) costumes suit their characters well. Joe Brancato’s (The Life & Blues of Bessie Smith) direction is unobtrusive. While this cautionary tale is both manipulative and predictable, it is elevated by good actors who make the characters and relationships convincing and by high production values. Running time: 95 minutes, no intermission.

The Niceties

A-

It would be hard to find a timelier, more relevant play around town than Eleanor Burgess’s ironically titled drama now at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage II at City Center. In a program note, the author states that she is intrigued by situations “when smart, well-meaning people, with great values and the best intentions, fundamentally can’t agree on the right way to behave.” Based on an incident at Yale in 2015, the two-character play explores the escalating conflict between Zoe (Jordan Boatman), a bright African-American student and her well-regarded professor Janine (Lisa Banes; Arcadia, Isn’t It Romantic). The two meet during office hours to discuss the term paper that Zoe has written for a course in Comparative Revolution. After pointing out a few grammatical and stylistic errors, Janine proceeds to attack Zoe’s thesis that slavery played an important role in preventing the American Revolution from becoming a radical one. After much back and forth, Janine challenges Zoe to find more impressive documentation than internet websites to back up her thesis. She offers Zoe more time to do so, but activist Zoe is more committed to upcoming protests than to her coursework. Their escalating arguments over racism, white privilege, biased curricula and basic philosophies lead to an outburst that has serious consequences for both of them. During the second act, they meet once more to see if they can find common ground to take action that might mitigate the damage that has been done. We do not get the comfort of an easy answer. The play is all the more poignant in that it is set in pre-election 2016, before we fully realized the depth of the chasms dividing the country. The play is not without its flaws: at first the author comes dangerously close to making Janine a caricature, but she partially redeems this with some humanizing information later on. I also would have liked to know more about Zoe’s background. The arguments occasionally become repetitious, but the topics are so timely and important that I didn’t mind. Some have compared the play to Oleanna, which it does resemble in structure, but the issues this play raises make Mamet’s play look trivial by comparison. Both actors are very strong. The set by Cameron Anderson (The Language of Trees) looks convincingly like a book-cluttered office on an Ivy campus. Kara Harmon’s (Dot) costumes are apt. Kimberly Senior’s (Disgraced) direction keeps things moving forward briskly. If you see it, I guarantee you will have lots to talk about afterwards. Running time: one hour 50 minutes, including intermission.

Days of Rage

B-

The title of Steven Levenson’s (Significant Other, Dear Evan Hansen) new play now in previews at Second Stage refers less to the three-day violent confrontation between anti-war activists and Chicago police in October 1969 than to the chaotic week preceding it at a protestors’ collective occupying a dilapidated house in an upstate New York college town. Three people presently live there: handsome Spence (Mike Faist; Dear Evan Hansen) and plain Jenny (Laura Patten; The Wolves), who have been best friends and sometimes a bit more since childhood, and the sexy Quinn (Australian actor Odessa Young), who is currently Spence’s favored bed partner. We learn that two men had left the collective after an argument over strategies. Two newcomers enter the circle: Peggy (Tavi Gevinson; This Is Your Youth, The Crucible), an enigmatic girl who begs to move in and offers them the money they need to get to Chicago, and Hal (J. Alphonse Nicholson; Paradise Blue), an African-American Sears employee whom Jenny takes a shine to. The group has had little success raising money or recruiting people to join them for the trip to Chicago. There is resentment against Spence for allowing Peggy to move in and against Jenny for starting a relationship with an outsider. We observe the collective’s group process at work. For the first third of the play, it is unclear whether anything more serious than who is sleeping with whom is at stake and whether the collective members are anything more than feckless idealists. In due time we get answers. An increasing sense of paranoia takes hold when they hear bad news about their ex-housemates and suspect that the house is being watched. A few surprises are in store. In a built-in epilogue, we learn the future course of their lives. It’s a story that starts slow but builds up steam as it progresses. The young actors are very good. I wish we received more back story on each character. My essential problem with the play is that I could not figure out the playwright’s point of view. I didn’t know whether his attitude toward the characters was satirical, cautionary or simply observational. I found it entertaining, increasingly involving but not very informative. The production is helped by a great set by Louisa Thompson (In the Blood) with a cross-section of a shabby cluttered house that rolls backwards when performing space is needed downstage. The costumes by Paloma Young (Peter and the Starcatcher) suit their characters very well. Trip Cullman’s (Lobby Hero, Yen) direction is assured. If you plan to see it, I suggest a quick look at “Days of Rage” on Wikipedia before you go. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.