New York creates in you a sense of Urgency, the feeling that you have failed if you are not in the Front Lines of whatever war it is that you are fighting. So it is that even if you have dined at Le Cirque(I have—elegant but overpriced,) with Royals(I have, --at least they said they were) or seen the best new musical( Billy Elliot—greatly overrated, but the boys were good) and the best new play, you have hardly any right to live here. So it was that having recently fought City Hall( and WON!!) I made my way this Sunday at noon and plunked myself on the floor of the lobby of the Bernie Jacobs theater at noon betting(and praying) there would be a cancellation for God of Carnage, the ticket in town that nobody can get.
Suspense! Drama! Will she get in? The woman in front of me got the last standing room so I would not have that option. The man in the ticket booth was wearing a red white and blue tie with a star and wide stripes so I wished him Happy Puerto Rico Day(I had seen the parade forming as I left my building,) but despite appreciation of my appreciation, he couldn’t tell me what my chances were. My heart leapt a little with every person who approached the window but there were no returns(Meg Ryan was there with her face pretty again, and Glenn Close came, surprisingly tiny.) Tick tock. Finally, on the dot of three, he signaled there was one ticket, and that was mine. J1. On the aisle.
Curtain up. The set is an apartment any New Yorker would be proud to live in, set in Brooklyn, which is hot again, tasteful beige stone walls and cornering vases of long-stemmed white tulips from Holland and the Korean grocer, comfortable sofa and chairs in which are seated the two couples meeting to settle a grievance over one of their sons knocking out two of the other’s teeth in a schoolyard brawl. Hostess is Marcia Gay Harden, married to James Gandolfini, who seemed uncomfortable at first—I could not tell whether it was because he was in a play or that situation—but he loosens up as the audience receives him like family—and we know which family. The moment he talks of being in a ‘gang’ at school, roars of laughter greet him, an old friend they were afraid they might not see again. Jeff Daniels is tight-assed excellent as a high-end lawyer issuing dictums on a cell phone to pull a drug company client out of embarrassing possible damage, and Hope Davis is restrainedly civilized till she isn’t anymore, with projectile vomiting on priceless art books a repellent (but crazily laughed at by a desensitized audience) visual joke.
Gradually restraint and politesse vanishes, and it becomes a free-for-all, freest of all for Marcia Gay Harden, who received a Tony as best actress(a wag on the way out said she “ate the scenery,” but I enjoyed her performance which I considered a relieved, released break out from all the caring wives she has played.) Biggest laugh of the play came from the angry throwing of Daniels’ cellphone into the tulips, as the theater rocked with laughing wives who had probably often been tempted to do the same to their husbands’ cells.
. I was seated next to three young people- an older sister maybe in her early twenties, really pretty, a slightly younger brother, and a much younger brother who doubtless was the wrong age for the play, used to watching TV and movies at home, and kept eating cookies from a rattlingly wax-papered box. Unleashed by the violence onstage when his one wax-paper crackle too many obscured the crackle of the dialogue, I am afraid I leaned over and slapped his hand, so he finally stopped.
I felt guilty, of course. But every once in a while, as the actors demonstrated onstage, bad behavior is only a constrained, frayed irritation away.
A friend asked if I would recommend it, and I would in an instant if anyone could get in without the endurance I had to show, both before and with the pesky little kid down the row. But it is the cast, I think, that made the play memorable, and I am not sure the same people will be retutning when it re-opens after a hiatus. If it does, by all means go. But hope they make an annnouncement to unwrap your sweets before the play starts.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Saturday, June 13, 2009
9 to 5
I was not expecting to enjoy 9-5, although in the years since seeing the movie I have come to very much admire Dolly Parton as a songwriter, especially on finding out she had written ‘I Will Always Love You,’ for The Bodyguard, as that was a song I sang in my head to the loves(I thought they were) who didn’t work out, the best torch song ever for misguided women, one of whom I was. But to my surprise, and intermittent delight, the musical stage version of that long ago(how long ago was it?) movie is very much a crowd-pleaser, and for a lot of the show, I was a part of the crowd.
For openers(a big one in an office) they announced some news from the Jimmy Carter era so we would all have our heads in the right time, and not be displaced by the out-of-date(is it really?) male supremacy. Allison Janney is authoritatively winning (as she always is) as the brainiest one of the trio, though her singing voice is by no means up to her acting; still it’s nice she’s there. Megan Hilty is past adorable as the Dolly today stand-in, with a voice that goes up up and away past her deliciousness as the great-breasted ‘Backwoods Barbie’ blonde. Stephanie J. Block in the Jane Fonda role is uncomfortably stiff, as Jane was, too, her penchant for comedy having been left behind, but Block’s voice is terrific. One is moved to wish she would take some acting lessons to bring her stage presence up to the quality of what’s in her throat—perhaps a yoga class or two to make her loosen up enough to seem comfortable in her own skin, and a hottie guide to how to seem sultry when wrapped in black sequins.
The guys, starting with Marc Kudisch as the lecherous, unsympathetic boss is kind of Charles Grodin pressingly comic, and Violet’s husband who dumped her, Dwayne is not worth sorrowing over. But Andy Karl as Joe who yearns for Violet’s appealing older woman is really likeable. Most disappointing is Kathy Fitzgerald as Roz, playing it like a road-company, unfunny, untouching Peggy Cass, making one yearn for a middle-aged woman who could be at once unappealing and hilarious—there have to be a slew of those looking for a job on the Great or sometimes Not-so-Great White Way.
There could have been a more drastic reworking of the movie so the musical hewed less strictly to its lines, especially the hospital scene which seemed extraneous and slowed down the happy momentum. But there was no doubt the audience was having the best time. The show deserves a run for its—and your—money.
For openers(a big one in an office) they announced some news from the Jimmy Carter era so we would all have our heads in the right time, and not be displaced by the out-of-date(is it really?) male supremacy. Allison Janney is authoritatively winning (as she always is) as the brainiest one of the trio, though her singing voice is by no means up to her acting; still it’s nice she’s there. Megan Hilty is past adorable as the Dolly today stand-in, with a voice that goes up up and away past her deliciousness as the great-breasted ‘Backwoods Barbie’ blonde. Stephanie J. Block in the Jane Fonda role is uncomfortably stiff, as Jane was, too, her penchant for comedy having been left behind, but Block’s voice is terrific. One is moved to wish she would take some acting lessons to bring her stage presence up to the quality of what’s in her throat—perhaps a yoga class or two to make her loosen up enough to seem comfortable in her own skin, and a hottie guide to how to seem sultry when wrapped in black sequins.
The guys, starting with Marc Kudisch as the lecherous, unsympathetic boss is kind of Charles Grodin pressingly comic, and Violet’s husband who dumped her, Dwayne is not worth sorrowing over. But Andy Karl as Joe who yearns for Violet’s appealing older woman is really likeable. Most disappointing is Kathy Fitzgerald as Roz, playing it like a road-company, unfunny, untouching Peggy Cass, making one yearn for a middle-aged woman who could be at once unappealing and hilarious—there have to be a slew of those looking for a job on the Great or sometimes Not-so-Great White Way.
There could have been a more drastic reworking of the movie so the musical hewed less strictly to its lines, especially the hospital scene which seemed extraneous and slowed down the happy momentum. But there was no doubt the audience was having the best time. The show deserves a run for its—and your—money.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
A Godot worth Waiting For
My great friend Kay Boyle, one of the hierarchy of American writers from that age which has passed, when writers were revered and dared to write books like "Being Geniuses Together" as Kay did when she was young and in Paris, highly esteemed Samuel Beckett, whom she actually knew, as she did James Joyce, contributing to my feeling that I had been born at the wrong time. (I had also felt that way about Keats and Shelley, but I was very young then, and would willingly have ended my life in my twenties in exchange for some of those poems.) But Samuel Beckett never did it for me, minimalism and the Theater of the Absurd-- unless it starred Zero Mostel--seeming more alienating than embracing, my thoughts about writers being that they should open their arms to the reader/audience, inviting them in. So any previous renditions of Godot that I have seen have neither moved me nor made me laugh.
But the production of Waiting for Godot now at Studio 54 has finally broken that barrier. To begin with, Nathan Lane, adored by the multitudes has always seemed to me over the top. Here, he is under it. Both respectful to the material and restrained in his performance, he manages to convey what there is of comedy in this bleak parable of human faith in the Invisible(and perhaps non-existent)to a gently charming degree. Bill Irwin is so comfortable in his own skin that he seems not to have bones, rather like Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow in Wizard of Oz, just one big, easy flap of a man, going along with it all, which may be the best, in reality, that any of us can do. John Glover is the one who has captured the kudos, up for a Tony as supporting player, tied round the neck at the end of John Goodman's rope, so sadly convincing that one of my friends thought he was a horse. Goodman, as Pozzo, in a much-heralded return to the stage, is alarmingly convincing as an overstuffed lord of the manor, genuinely scary not because of his insensitivity but because of his size, since many in the audience have become fond of him over the years in accessible and genial roles giving many the feeling they actually knew him, so overweight that one fears for his heart; the scene where he falls to the ground and cannot get up because of his avoirdupois is more wrenching than comic.
All in all, director Anthony Page has done an admirable job. The scenic design, if such it can be called, except for the sorry tree that sprouts a few leaves, like the hope of a Creative Intelligence behind the universe, is comprised mostly of boulders, echoing almost to the color and number of rocks what seemed to me the ordeal of the season, if you don't count 'Impressionism', 'Desire Under the Elms.' But all in all, very much worth the seeing, if you don't really need an answer to the Meaning of It All, or that there might be none.
But the production of Waiting for Godot now at Studio 54 has finally broken that barrier. To begin with, Nathan Lane, adored by the multitudes has always seemed to me over the top. Here, he is under it. Both respectful to the material and restrained in his performance, he manages to convey what there is of comedy in this bleak parable of human faith in the Invisible(and perhaps non-existent)to a gently charming degree. Bill Irwin is so comfortable in his own skin that he seems not to have bones, rather like Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow in Wizard of Oz, just one big, easy flap of a man, going along with it all, which may be the best, in reality, that any of us can do. John Glover is the one who has captured the kudos, up for a Tony as supporting player, tied round the neck at the end of John Goodman's rope, so sadly convincing that one of my friends thought he was a horse. Goodman, as Pozzo, in a much-heralded return to the stage, is alarmingly convincing as an overstuffed lord of the manor, genuinely scary not because of his insensitivity but because of his size, since many in the audience have become fond of him over the years in accessible and genial roles giving many the feeling they actually knew him, so overweight that one fears for his heart; the scene where he falls to the ground and cannot get up because of his avoirdupois is more wrenching than comic.
All in all, director Anthony Page has done an admirable job. The scenic design, if such it can be called, except for the sorry tree that sprouts a few leaves, like the hope of a Creative Intelligence behind the universe, is comprised mostly of boulders, echoing almost to the color and number of rocks what seemed to me the ordeal of the season, if you don't count 'Impressionism', 'Desire Under the Elms.' But all in all, very much worth the seeing, if you don't really need an answer to the Meaning of It All, or that there might be none.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Not one Bad Follicle
Great Energy and a sense of anticipation are palpable at the Al Hirschfield Theatre where HAIR is playing, almost as if the audience knew in advance that finally, something is going to be as great as the reviews. When the lights started to go down there was an audible intake of breath, and applause: they couldn’t wait, and the excitement was justified. I am probably the only one of my generation who never saw it, or the movie, and knew only the most celebrated songs in its score(“Age of Aquarius,””Easy to be Hard,””Let the Sun Shine In.”) I was writing novels and taking care of babies, so the obscenity of Vietnam never surfaced on my spiritual radar until Lyndon Johnson announced he would not accept or seek, etc. But there was a woman I met at intermission who had wept all during the first act, because her high school class in East Los Angeles didn’t have the connections or the money to avoid the draft, and she didn’t know how many of them had probably died. I didn’t start crying until the second act, when the full power of this musical hit me. For the first half, I just rollicked in the talent and the visible joy of the performers.
The show—and a true show it is, lights and color and costumes and nudity coalescing into an almost dream state, except that everyone and everything is so alive it could only be lucid dreaming—is the most exciting I’ve seen since moving back to New York. For me it was less a revival than a Revival Meeting, everyone, cast and audience alike, got so completely into the spirit, it made me believe. I was in a particularly lucky location, so got kissed, hugged, and my hair played with by members of the cast who come barreling down the aisle as though carrying good news. They are beautiful, gifted, generous and funny, and those among them playing contrarians and stiffs are just as spontaneously funny—when the disapproving very middle class couple went to leave the theatre, the wife(in drag) muttered “Let’s go see ‘West Side Story’,” to bleats of laughter on the part of those who heard(and apparently had seen ‘West Side Story.’)
Will Swenson is more than winning and likeable in the key role of Berger, inoffensive for all he does of a seemingly offensive nature, and endearing when he interacts with the audience(was that really his Mom in the front row?) Bryce Ryness is funny and touching as Woof(twas he who toyed with my hair, and bent down to let me play with his) Gavin Creel is bright and ultimately deeply moving as Claude, who ends up the shorn victim of that war. Cassie Levy is the most visibly vulnerable of the universally pretty and gifted women, and Saycon Sengbloh, a substitute Dionne in the performance I attended has a presence and a voice that could blow you out of the theatre, if it wasn’t so much better being able to stay. When the understudies are that good, you can’t make a mistake to go go go. Loved it loved it loved it. The youthful exuberance and happiness of all involved—not the least the band who can be observed having a great time while playing, makes the point of how much is lost in a war, and the pointlessness of the whole terrible exercise. Up to the minute, really, revival or no. Hurry Hurry hurry, though it’s due to be there through November. Long, even longer may it wave.
The show—and a true show it is, lights and color and costumes and nudity coalescing into an almost dream state, except that everyone and everything is so alive it could only be lucid dreaming—is the most exciting I’ve seen since moving back to New York. For me it was less a revival than a Revival Meeting, everyone, cast and audience alike, got so completely into the spirit, it made me believe. I was in a particularly lucky location, so got kissed, hugged, and my hair played with by members of the cast who come barreling down the aisle as though carrying good news. They are beautiful, gifted, generous and funny, and those among them playing contrarians and stiffs are just as spontaneously funny—when the disapproving very middle class couple went to leave the theatre, the wife(in drag) muttered “Let’s go see ‘West Side Story’,” to bleats of laughter on the part of those who heard(and apparently had seen ‘West Side Story.’)
Will Swenson is more than winning and likeable in the key role of Berger, inoffensive for all he does of a seemingly offensive nature, and endearing when he interacts with the audience(was that really his Mom in the front row?) Bryce Ryness is funny and touching as Woof(twas he who toyed with my hair, and bent down to let me play with his) Gavin Creel is bright and ultimately deeply moving as Claude, who ends up the shorn victim of that war. Cassie Levy is the most visibly vulnerable of the universally pretty and gifted women, and Saycon Sengbloh, a substitute Dionne in the performance I attended has a presence and a voice that could blow you out of the theatre, if it wasn’t so much better being able to stay. When the understudies are that good, you can’t make a mistake to go go go. Loved it loved it loved it. The youthful exuberance and happiness of all involved—not the least the band who can be observed having a great time while playing, makes the point of how much is lost in a war, and the pointlessness of the whole terrible exercise. Up to the minute, really, revival or no. Hurry Hurry hurry, though it’s due to be there through November. Long, even longer may it wave.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Nice Work if you Can Get It
Sherie Rene Scott is a conventionally pretty, unconventionally gifted, phenomenally hardworking and very alive woman who has, apparently, been trapped for several seasons inside 'The Little Mermaid.' In 'EVERYDAY RAPTURE,'this Almost One-Woman show, (two back-up singers, a cutely nerdy teenage boy plant in the audience and a four piece band) she exhibits talents, wit, and irreverence that made Ben Brantley, the theater critic for the New York Times for those of you who are someplace else(Mars, the Moon)swoon in public. Having escaped(not too easily) her Mennonite upbringing in Kansas, like Judy Garland, one of her idols, she isn't there anymore, having lifted herself with energy and grace into the semi-Big Time. She herself cites having played secondary roles in a musical or two(I have seen her in only one, in which she was not particularly memorable nor was the musical) and it was fun for me to get to know her and the probably great range(she sings full throttle, and does a fine Judy Garlandesque 'You Made me Love You' not to a picture of Clark Gable but Jesus, in various renditions-- the paintings not the song.) She is self-deprecating in a way that suggests she does really like herself which was a relief after watching a loved friend belittle herself a little too sincerely in cabaret. So Sherie likes Sherie, and we do, too.
I used to enjoy the Playbills the way they were so you got a little background that wasn't just credits, and you knew what the performers had come from, where they'd studied and with whom, and they could lie sometimes like Brando did saying he was born in Calcutta. As it is, we know from the show itself that her life is an open book with songs and a husband and a three year old son and some truly endearing tricks of magic, the old kind, and she deserves the first lead in a really first rate show. The person I went with was not as impressed as I, saying she liked her better when she was in a role. Well who wouldn't, and where are they? As it is, it was a treat to meet her as herself, which I hope she will be for the rest of her life, with some upstart, flashy, conniving and outrageous characters to hide behind when and if they materialize. In the meantime, Salutes.
I used to enjoy the Playbills the way they were so you got a little background that wasn't just credits, and you knew what the performers had come from, where they'd studied and with whom, and they could lie sometimes like Brando did saying he was born in Calcutta. As it is, we know from the show itself that her life is an open book with songs and a husband and a three year old son and some truly endearing tricks of magic, the old kind, and she deserves the first lead in a really first rate show. The person I went with was not as impressed as I, saying she liked her better when she was in a role. Well who wouldn't, and where are they? As it is, it was a treat to meet her as herself, which I hope she will be for the rest of her life, with some upstart, flashy, conniving and outrageous characters to hide behind when and if they materialize. In the meantime, Salutes.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, or in this case, ROCKS
Because I have not suffered enough, I went this Sunday matinee to see the Goodman Theatre production of Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms, much praised by reviewers and driving away the audience in droves, so scheduled for an early demise. Having had the good fortune this week to connect with two very bright ladies close to and involved with theatre(am spelling it the Goodman way), one of whom told me she had fallen asleep in the course of viewing it; forewarned, I nonetheless made my way to the cut-rate ticket booths, where almost everything is 50% off except for Hair and God and Carnage, the two things I really want to see, and bought my ticket.
In my youth, which never seemed that long ago until this week, I had some heavy interaction with that property, as I was in love with Tony Perkins, being built up at the time as the new teenage movie Idol, and he was scheduled to do the movie of it with Sophia Loren. I was of course deeply jealous of Sophia Loren as a matter of principle, but had no reason to be with respect to Tony. It was still the era of the Love that Dared Not Speak its Name, certainly not in Hollywood, where a career would be ruined if anyone knew, so I blithely assumed there was no physical interaction between us because he was respecting my young Jewish maidenhood, and was devastated to discover later on I had lost him to Tab Hunter.
But on the set of Desire at Paramount, I had less reason to be jealous of Sophia than Dorothy Jeakins, the costume designer, who constantly praised not just Sophia’s breasts but the tininess of her rib cage, and got to touch Tony all the time, fitting his clothes. So there he was, playing Eben, less tormented that he might be losing the farm than that Sophia would eat him alive, she was so much woman. Anyway that is the old story, but now we must deal with Mr. O’Neill.
One of the bright theatre ladies said she understood the plot was from a Greek myth. I have of late been much involved with Greek myths on several levels, having been, I hoped, inspired to write a play, and remembering I had a mind since there’s a Bryn Mawr reunion coming up, read several plays by Aeschylus, which ain’t easy. This production of Desire begins not with a whimper but a Bang, perhaps meant to be a thunderclap, followed by drums and many terrible sounds as two Neanderthalish men, meant to be the older sons of Ephraim Cabot(played stirringly but by the end who really cares) by Brian Dennehy, drag in what my friend Tyne Daly in a Getty(in LA) production of Agamemnon in which she appeared , fierce and impressive, told me was a sledge, the way old Aeschylus brought in offstage action, in that case a couple of bodies, but in this case was rocks. Rocks everywhere. No sign of elms, but rocks all around, hanging suspended in space, doing everything but getting themselves off. Not so in the case of the young lovers, Ephraim’s new young wife, played by Carla Gugino whom I really admired because she was tiny and did not bring me in mind of Sophia, and Pablo Schreiber, who played the young son, and put me much in mind of Tony when he was young and no one knew he was gay, or, as it later turned out with the help of Victoria Principal, bi-sexual. Tony’s personal tragedy might have challenged O’Neill, as having married a lovely woman, Berry Berenson, and fathering two sons, he was among the first of the highly visible to die of AIDS, and Berry, his gifted, aquamarine-eyed widow was in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.
But back to this play. The almost constant intrusion of music to lessen the stolid weightiness of the plot put me in mind of Impressionism, the awful play that had just closed next door, where the music, looped in over the silences and poor dialogue like a 40 s movie where they needed to make it seem weighty or moving faster when there was no action, was more than disconcerting. I see that concert is in the middle of that word, which makes me wonder. Anyway, the lust of the two young principles is palpable. Dennehy is fine, albeit diminished in stature during the course of the story so he seems almost to grow shorter by the end of it.
A friend of mine, Susan Dorlen, went to Yale Drama School, where her teacher said ‘The great tragedian of American writers is Eugene O’Neill, and that is the tragedy of the American theater.’ Across the street from ‘Desire’ is ‘August, Osage County,’ which I considered to be ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ turned on its side and made into a comedy. But I’ll tell you, when Abby, the young wife, kills her baby to prove to Eben that she loves him, I could not help thinking about O’Neill, the bastard really knew how to plot.
Or maybe it was the Greeks.
In my youth, which never seemed that long ago until this week, I had some heavy interaction with that property, as I was in love with Tony Perkins, being built up at the time as the new teenage movie Idol, and he was scheduled to do the movie of it with Sophia Loren. I was of course deeply jealous of Sophia Loren as a matter of principle, but had no reason to be with respect to Tony. It was still the era of the Love that Dared Not Speak its Name, certainly not in Hollywood, where a career would be ruined if anyone knew, so I blithely assumed there was no physical interaction between us because he was respecting my young Jewish maidenhood, and was devastated to discover later on I had lost him to Tab Hunter.
But on the set of Desire at Paramount, I had less reason to be jealous of Sophia than Dorothy Jeakins, the costume designer, who constantly praised not just Sophia’s breasts but the tininess of her rib cage, and got to touch Tony all the time, fitting his clothes. So there he was, playing Eben, less tormented that he might be losing the farm than that Sophia would eat him alive, she was so much woman. Anyway that is the old story, but now we must deal with Mr. O’Neill.
One of the bright theatre ladies said she understood the plot was from a Greek myth. I have of late been much involved with Greek myths on several levels, having been, I hoped, inspired to write a play, and remembering I had a mind since there’s a Bryn Mawr reunion coming up, read several plays by Aeschylus, which ain’t easy. This production of Desire begins not with a whimper but a Bang, perhaps meant to be a thunderclap, followed by drums and many terrible sounds as two Neanderthalish men, meant to be the older sons of Ephraim Cabot(played stirringly but by the end who really cares) by Brian Dennehy, drag in what my friend Tyne Daly in a Getty(in LA) production of Agamemnon in which she appeared , fierce and impressive, told me was a sledge, the way old Aeschylus brought in offstage action, in that case a couple of bodies, but in this case was rocks. Rocks everywhere. No sign of elms, but rocks all around, hanging suspended in space, doing everything but getting themselves off. Not so in the case of the young lovers, Ephraim’s new young wife, played by Carla Gugino whom I really admired because she was tiny and did not bring me in mind of Sophia, and Pablo Schreiber, who played the young son, and put me much in mind of Tony when he was young and no one knew he was gay, or, as it later turned out with the help of Victoria Principal, bi-sexual. Tony’s personal tragedy might have challenged O’Neill, as having married a lovely woman, Berry Berenson, and fathering two sons, he was among the first of the highly visible to die of AIDS, and Berry, his gifted, aquamarine-eyed widow was in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.
But back to this play. The almost constant intrusion of music to lessen the stolid weightiness of the plot put me in mind of Impressionism, the awful play that had just closed next door, where the music, looped in over the silences and poor dialogue like a 40 s movie where they needed to make it seem weighty or moving faster when there was no action, was more than disconcerting. I see that concert is in the middle of that word, which makes me wonder. Anyway, the lust of the two young principles is palpable. Dennehy is fine, albeit diminished in stature during the course of the story so he seems almost to grow shorter by the end of it.
A friend of mine, Susan Dorlen, went to Yale Drama School, where her teacher said ‘The great tragedian of American writers is Eugene O’Neill, and that is the tragedy of the American theater.’ Across the street from ‘Desire’ is ‘August, Osage County,’ which I considered to be ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ turned on its side and made into a comedy. But I’ll tell you, when Abby, the young wife, kills her baby to prove to Eben that she loves him, I could not help thinking about O’Neill, the bastard really knew how to plot.
Or maybe it was the Greeks.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
COMEDY, in the Round, and UNHINGED
Christopher Durang is clearly deranged, and I couldn’t be more pleased. His targets in “WHY TORTURE IS WRONG, and the People who Love Them” at the Public are those decent people despise—“enhanced interrogation” and paranoia, which include the people who have the second and so do the first. Upstairs in the home of the parents of Felicity(Tony award winning Laura Benanti, who has less of an adversary in her (could he be?) terrorist husband, than she did with Patti Lupone playing her mother in “Gypsy”) her father(Richard Poe) is conducting a “shadow government”, Dick Cheney with hair. Her mother, Luella, (Kristine Nielsen) deliciously ditsy and full of actressy surprises, gave me, personally, a passel of laughs, expressing the playwright’s disdain for that with which I most closely identified: “Wicked” and Tom Stoppard’s “Coast of Utopia” (someone she knew committed suicide rather than face the third segment of that marathon , as bleak and pretentious an experience as I have ever had in the theater.)
A happier marathon, apparently, took place at the Circle in the Square, with Alan Ayckbourn’s “The Norman Conquests.” I saw only the evening’s presentation, but the audience that had been there all day sat literally around with delighted expressions on their faces, as if they had spent the time with eccentric but beloved relatives. There is employed in the scenario the device of the “dirty weekend,” which the Brits, in their dualistic approach to sex, much too well brought up to discuss it openly, but secretly delighting in its gamey underside(see Christine Keeler and various shops in Shepherd’s Market) seem to like better than straightforward lust. Nobody managed to get away to have one in the segment I saw, but everyone longed for and almost got there. The three sisters and their various mates all of whom hunger for one of the others are acted with comedic perfection by the ensemble cast, directed to a farcical fare-thee-well by Matthew Warchus. I shall have to go back and see the other two to understand why the patently intelligent audience felt such a sense of kinship and delight with their adopted(for a day) family
A happier marathon, apparently, took place at the Circle in the Square, with Alan Ayckbourn’s “The Norman Conquests.” I saw only the evening’s presentation, but the audience that had been there all day sat literally around with delighted expressions on their faces, as if they had spent the time with eccentric but beloved relatives. There is employed in the scenario the device of the “dirty weekend,” which the Brits, in their dualistic approach to sex, much too well brought up to discuss it openly, but secretly delighting in its gamey underside(see Christine Keeler and various shops in Shepherd’s Market) seem to like better than straightforward lust. Nobody managed to get away to have one in the segment I saw, but everyone longed for and almost got there. The three sisters and their various mates all of whom hunger for one of the others are acted with comedic perfection by the ensemble cast, directed to a farcical fare-thee-well by Matthew Warchus. I shall have to go back and see the other two to understand why the patently intelligent audience felt such a sense of kinship and delight with their adopted(for a day) family
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