CityCabaret.com

THEATRE ARCHIVES                                                                                                                                                  

CitiStage

Theatre Reviews



 

2011 – 2012

 

November 2011

 

Other Desert Cities

 

Write about what you know, that’s what they say, but be prepared for the aftermath. Not to spoil the anguished twists of Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities, but when the affluent Wyeths of Palm Springs come together to celebrate the holidays, the Christmas spirit is shattered by daughter Brooke’s gift, the manuscript of her unpublished book. Unfortunately, it is a family memoir. Suddenly the holiday cheer turns threatening. 

 

Earlier this year, the well-crafted production opened off Broadway at Lincoln Center with all signs pointing to Broadway.  Now opening at the Booth Theatre, the broader stage emphasizes the affluence of the Wyeth’s lifestyle without hinting at the simmering unrevealed secrets. Beneath the immaculate décor, high-styled resort wear, crisp, sophisticated wit, swirls a maelstrom of misunderstandings, lifestyle clashes, and, as an absent centerpiece, an absent son, Henry. Under director Joe Mantella’s assured hand, Other Desert Cities, is riveting theater, the play of the season thus far. 

 

Former screenwriter, accomplished matriarch Polly Wyeth (Stockard Channing) and her husband Lyman (Stacy Keach), a retired movie actor, are conservative Republicans, once part of the Reagan social clique. Youngest son, Trip (Thomas Sadowski), a reality TV show producer, has come down from Los Angeles.  Daughter Brooke is back for her first visit in six years. She had moved to Long Island to escape her family, but she never could escape the unanswered questions muddled in her mind and spent several months in a psychiatric hospital. 

 

When I reviewed the off-Broadway production, the play was tight, the ensemble impressive. Two upcoming cast changes seemed problematic because the originals, Elizabeth Marvel playing fractured Brooke and Linda Lavin as Polly’s recovering alcoholic sister, Silda, were so deftly on target.

 

Luckily, their replacements lend individual assets. Judith Light’s Silda is slim and frail yet quick with her bright, brittle quips, a precise display of her character’s intelligence and weakness.  Even as she is temporarily supported by her sister, Silda takes every opportunity to push Polly’s buttons and the tension between the two sizzles.  Making her Broadway debut as Brooke, Rachel Griffith (from Baitz’ television series, Brothers and Sisters) displays a polished control at first that blankets her resentment, her friction with her mother, and a desperate need for the family’s approval of her book. It was Brooke who was closest with her older brother, Henry, and is outraged at her father’s Christmas toast to the family that does not mention Henry. In the second act, Griffith finally unleashes Brooke’s tenuous vulnerability with piercing anguish.

 

Stockard Channing remains a seamlessly confident Polly Wyeth, wearing the character like a second skin, skillful at keeping the unmentionables at bay.  As Lyman, Keach lets Polly take the lead until the explosive second act when he can no longer live with the deception and he ignites the emotional firestorm. Thomas Sadowski portrays Trip with commendably natural ease and his sibling interaction with Griffith is right on target.  Trip, too young when the troubling events happened, is now caught in the middle, forced to act as buffer.  As it turns out, the free-wheeling Silda is not as removed from the scandal as it first seemed.

 

The opulent expanse of John Lee Beatty's curved stone wall and beige furnishings is enhanced with Kenneth Posner’s lighting. While David Zin’s costumes for Polly and Lyman reflect Southern California elegance, they contrast with Brooke and Trip’s contemporarily haphazard look. Judith Light wears a bleaker caftan than Lavin, which better illustrates her unkempt situation.  

 

Jon Robin Baitz, Joe Mantello and this smart ensemble commendably keep a balance in the battle between the family’s fierce dysfunction and their love for each other. A coda at the end proves to drive this point home. 

 

Elizabeth Ahlfors

November 2011

Booth Theater

222 West 45th Street

New York, N.Y.

Nov. 3, 2011 – Jan. 8, 2011

 

Also appearing in TotalTheater.com

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

October 2011

 

A Man and Boy

 

Frank Langella delivers a masterful performance in a difficult, albeit timely play by Terrance Rattigan.  While the story takes place in 1934, one cannot ignore the similarities to Bernard Madoff and the current economic crisis.  Frank Langella never fails to rule the stage as Gregor Antonescu, a manipulating financier who lacks a conscience and abuses not only his business dealings but his wife and especially his son, Vassily (Adam Driver).  “Love is a commodity I can’t afford,” he tells Vassily.   

 

While the first act should be enlightening and dramatic, it is talky and often sags.  The play takes place in Vassily’s basement flat in Greenwich Village, well-detailed with Derek McLane’s precision.  Vassily now calls himself “Basil Anthony,” plays piano in a nearby club, and has a girlfriend, Carol (Virginia Kull).  He has been trying to forge a life for himself in New York after disowning his father five years earlier in London when he learned about Gregor’s unethical business.  He is a needy young man, caught in a love-hate relationship with his father that affects his ambitions and his relationship with Carol.  Now hearing that Gregor is planning to visit, Vassily is again filled with apprehension about seeing his father again.

 

Vassily leaves for work when his father’s aide-de-camp, Sven Johnson (Michael Siberry) shows up, followed by Gregor, darkly incognito.  Gregor is facing a financial disaster and is planning to use his son’s flat to hide from the media and the FBI.  He has one hope for salvation, Mark Herries of American Edison, played with confidence and equivocation by Zach Grenier.  Gregor Antonescu, through everything, remains elegant and cruel, prowling the stage, beautifully suited by Martin Pakledinaz with subtle mannerisms and sarcastic retorts.  His depths of immorality even extend to the possibility of pimping Vassily out to Harries, a closeted homosexual, in exchange for an American Edison deal that will save his career and his fortune. 

 

Act II is enlivened as Vassily and Gregor must seriously face each other.  Gregor shows little love for damaged Vassily, and considers him soft and weak-willed.  When Gregor asks the boy to help him with a final escape, Vassily has the strength to refuse and with the press and FBI closing in, Gregor is left with only one option he can accept. 

 

Michael Siberry and Zach Grenier are convincing hard-boiled businessmen and Francesca Faridany as Gregor’s wife, the dramatic Countess Florence, is especially spirited.  Brian Hutchinson is cast as Harries’ harried accountant and Virginia Kull is young and energetic as Vassily’s supportive girlfriend. Adam Driver is gawky and troubled as the son but fails to evoke pathos. 

 

Maria Aitken directs the twists and talkiness with a firm hand, but Rattigan’s 1963 melodrama is often dense and lacks the needed emotion for this father and son drama. It is hard to feel empathy even for Vassily, and while all the characters add to the plot, it is Frank Langella who dominates the stage with his chill smoothless and crisp resonance, playing his adversaries and his aides as he would a chess game.  His Gregor Antonescu is the abhorrent user you love to watch and hate.

 

Elizabeth Ahlfors

October 2011

American Airlines Theatre

112 West 42nd Street

New York, N.Y.

Oct. 9, 2011 – Nov. 27, 2011

 

Also appearing in TotalTheater.com

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

October 2011

Temporal Powers

 

At the Mint Theater, Teresa Deevy’s Temporal Powers tackles the moral and practical issues of right and wrong through the lenses of Michael and Min Donovan’s relationship, a once passionate marriage that is now as eviscerated of its inner vitality as its material possessions. 

 

Money is the root of this story of Ireland’s economic evils, and is bolstered by institutionalized religion and ingrained sexism. Michael Donovan (Aiden Redmond) and his wife, Min (Rosie Benton) are destitute as the play opens in 1927. Evicted from their home, they are temporarily sheltered in the ruins of a country cottage.  Rosie Benton fiercely rules the stage as the frustrated Min, who cannot contain her bitterness at their life and rails at her husband’s stoic demeanor.  Michael is resigned to working hard for little money.  This is God’s will, he feels. “It must be the poverty was meant for us.” Not so for Min.

 

When Michael accidentally comes across an envelope full of money, Min is elated.  This could be their salvation.  Michael agrees but is uneasy about keeping the money. It does not belong to him. Perhaps was stolen.  He decides to take it to Father O'Brien, the local priest, for safe keeping.  Battling to keep alive the last spark of hope she has for their life, Min demands they use the money to go to America and start a new life. 

 

As the story craftily bobs and weaves, it seems obvious that there is no solution to right and wrong in this situation. Family and neighbors arrive with their own problems.  As it turns out, the money was indeed stolen by one family member, Ned (Con Horgan), a low-life married to Michael’s long-suffering sister, Maggie (Bairbre Downling).  When Min discovers this, she conspires with Ned to grab the money from Michael and split it. 

 

Director Jonathan Bank steers a difficult course, eliciting deftly chiseled performances, giving the story strengths that carry it past the complex dialects.  Redmond's Michael and Benton's portrayal of Min contain mixes of emotion below the immediate crisis.  Even as Min rages against Michael, her love for him eventually becomes evident and Michael also displays his own internal fury seething beneath his placid exterior. The robber, Ned, is a shifty manipulator who for some reason is protected by the community.  More likeable is young local, Moses (Eli James), in love with the sunny, Lizzie (Wrenn Schmidt), but their romance is on rocky terrain, subject to the furies of Moses’ controlling mother, Daisy, played by Fiana Toibin.

 

It would help to read Temporal Powers before seeing it.  Even with Deevy’s thoughtful book, the vibrant performances, spirited characters, and dialogue coach, Amy Stoller’s program insights, the colorful Gaelic idioms and dialects demand concentration for three acts.  The whiskey-tasting during two intermissions may help or at least inspire debate about a play written in 1932 and quite relevant today.

 

Elizabeth Ahlfors

September 2011

 

Mint Theater

311 West 43th Street

New York, N.Y.

Aug. 29-Oct. 2, 2011

 

Also appearing in TotalTheater.com

 

July 2011

Master Class

Tyne Daly inhabits the fury, if not the sound of bigger-than-life coloratura, Maria Callas, in Terrence McNally’s 1995 award-winning, Master Class. Under Stephen Wadsworth’s direction, she delivers the complexity, the conceit and paranoia, and the passion of the legendary La Divina, who was adored for her theatricality as much as her singing.

 

Callas was the grande diva with the requisite ego but in Master Class, her peak years are behind her. In a classroom at the Juilliard School, she faces three young opera hopefuls and prepares to critique their performances and instruct them about the diction, discipline, and courage needed to be a great artist. “It’s all in the music. Listen to the music.” Bluntly, she advises, “Don’t take this personally but you don’t have a look.  You need presence.”

 

The three opera hopefuls are played by Alexandra Silber, Garrett Sorenson, and Sierra Boggess who are all talented but immature singers who pale in presence to Callas.  Silber is awkward and nervous as Sophie DePalma, prepared to sing from La Sonnambula.  Sierra Boggess as Sharon Graham enters with overblown confidence, expecting praise from Callas for her Lady MacBeth aria. At the end, she rejects Callas for what she has become, a self-indulgent diva who lost her voice. Sorenson, as tenor Antonio Candolino, gets the highest praise from Callas for his aria from Tosca. His gender is an obvious influence, since Callas harbors resentments about her female colleagues like Joan Sutherland and Renata Scotto.

 

Daly illustrates the “presence” of Callas. She rules the stage. Your eyes don’t leave her, the chin held high, a confident power strutting across the stage, the self-awareness, lightening flashes of attitude, and a sarcastic strain of humor. She is tactless with her pianist, Manny (Jeremy Cohen) who idolizes her and is dismissive with an unimpressed stagehand, Clinton Brandhagen. However, beneath the hauteur, there is still a restless insecurity and a lingering self image as “a fat, ugly Greek.” She had to scramble for every advantage, and was abused by opera directors and most of all, by Aristotle Onassis. 

 

As fast as Callas turns to her students, she loses interest in their performances, letting their music lead her into memories of her own past performances. She weaves in her personal experiences with Giovanni Battista Meneghini, the husband she treated badly and Onassis, the crass lover who finally left her for someone younger and even more prestigious than the fading La Divina. Daly speaks Italian in two gripping soliloquies and while her accent is not sharp, her interpretation is impressive.

 

Tyne Daly achieves a resemblance evocative of the opera star with Paul Huntley’s Callas-length dark wig and a mask of stark theatrical makeup. Martin Pakledinaz dresses Daly in chic black with a bright scarf hooked into an expensive handbag.  He gives Alexandra Silber a careless schoolgirl look and Sierra Burgess is overdressed in a long purple gown. The set by Thomas Lynch resembles an auditorium. When Callas fades into her reminiscences, the stage goes dark and David Lander’s moody light focuses on the star. Through the dramatic darkness rings Maria Callas’ recorded voice. “That’s who I am. This voice,” says Callas.

 

McNally’s play, while not an authoritative biography, is riveting with Tyne Daly’s nuanced interpretation. Her pauses and stresses are on target. Daly proves again that she can play a TV earth mother/detective (Cagey and Lacey), a classic Broadway stage mother (Gypsy) and in a cabaret room she can deliver a touching interpretation of Buddy Holly’s bouncy rock’n’roll hit, “Oh, Boy.” She never fails to be compelling, honest and technically on target. In the Manhattan Theatre Club’s limited run at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, Daly delivers the first tour de force of the 2011-2012 seasons, setting the bar high for award time next spring.

 

This production of Master Class was first produced by the Kennedy Center from March 25 - April 18, 2010.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

July, 2011

 

Manhattan Theatre Club

 Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St 

July 7, 2011 –  May. 24, 2011

 

Also appearing in TotalTheater.com

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

June 2011

 

Side Effects

 

A marriage coasting along on a smooth sea rarely adds up to enthralling theater.  It is a more tumultuous relationship, the more ferocious the better, that grabs the audience.  Playwright Michael Weller did it in 2008 with, Fifty Words.   It’s no surprise, therefore, that in his current play, Side Effects, Hugh and Melinda “Lindy” Metz (Cotter Smith and Joely Richardson), tackle a maelstrom of problems lurking beneath their marriage. 

 

Fifty Words told a tale of one disintegrating marriage and now, in the same theater, MCC Theater, brings in a two-hander companion piece with Side Effects. 

 

Hugh is a rigid, hard-working businessman at his faltering family company.  He wants to run for political office with a mentor who advises him that his number one problem for political success is keeping his wife, Lindy, reined in.  Lindy is a free-spirited intellectual, a bipolar kaleidoscope of moods and loose cannon when she is off her meds.  She feels repressed by her husband’s disapproval and the demands of his political campaigning.  To rebel, she goes off her mood-stabilizing drugs and picks up an old affair.  Hugh, long-suffering, has his own fling.  Their unraveling relationship escalates with unrelenting tension and fierceness and you have to wonder why, and how, they can stand each other.

 

The characters are sharply delineated and Joely Richardson (Nip Tuck) is captivating as the capricious  Lindy.  There is not a good guy-bad guy aspect here but the lithe Richardson as Lindy, is eye-catching with her quicksilver switches from depressive to seductress to mercurial wit.  She is never satisfied with her life, constantly wants something new and totters of the edge of calamity.  She would be impossible to live with but for an audience, she is fun to watch and often sympathetic. 

 

Cotter Smith (Next Fall) brings a convincing portrayal of the complex, troubled husband to this frustrated twosome.  Cotter’s stolid Hugh cannot match his wife’s charisma, humor or intellect except with anger and thus, he is easier to dislike, especially at the end.  Sexually, they are like magnets, even during the heat of fierce anger.  It is obvious that there is love for each other and their two teenage sons.  The sons are not present in the play but apparently one is as steady as Hugh and the other has the spirit of his mother, also problematic for the couple.


David Auburn (author of Proof), directs the play showcasing the couple struggling on their wild roller coaster relationship. Beowolf Boritt’s set shows a neat-as-a-pin traditional living room, with everything in place, ready to be trashed like the marriage. Costumed by Wade Laboossonniere, Lindy wears hip, casual clothes that would appeal to her character while her husband, predictably, is predictably conventional.

Weller’s previous play, Fifty Words, was about Adam and Jan with their marital problems, including Adam’s affair with Lindy Metz.  That play ends with Adam’s 50 words when he makes a telephone call, and in Side Effects, we hear the other end of that phone call.  Seeing both plays together could be an ordeal.  In fact, watching only Side Effects, which should stand alone, gets repetitive, and the 90-minute play has some tiresome moments.  Kudos, however, to Joely Richardson and Cotter Smith for bringing their all, with energy and intuition, to the inevitable spiraling down of yet another destructive duo.

 

 

Elizabeth Ahlfors

June 2011

 

Lucille Lortel Theaer

121 Christopher Street

New York, N.Y.

June 19 – July 2, 2011

 

 

Also appearing in TotalTheater.com

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

THEATRE ARCHIVES

 

      

 http://www.citycabaret.com/    

 

       © 2011 Elizabeth Ahlfors.  All rights reserved worldwide