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2011-2012 SEASON

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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together to celebrate the holidays, the Christmas spirit is shattered by daughter Brooke’s gift, the manuscript of her unpublished book.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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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War Horse - April 2011

It was called “The Great War” and “The War to End all Wars,” but World War I is now relatively ignored in the legacy of wars that followed. In War Horse at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre, World War I is the background for the most gripping theatrical event of this season. Co-directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris, it is about a boy and a horse. It is also about how millions of horses were traditionally sent into battle until the use barbed wire, machine guns and heavy artillery signified the end of the cavalry. Technology had taken over.

There are no famous names leading the War Horse cast. In fact, you will probably not remember the names of most company members, but there is one you will definitely remember -- Joey. Joey is a puppet although there are moments when you almost forget he is not a real horse. Even with evident puppeteers doing their manipulating, Joey elicits sympathy, laughs, tears. From the moment Joey as a foal struggles to approach the front of the stage, the audience is seduced.

Seth Numrich is memorable as Albert Narracott, a 16-year-old boy living on a struggling farm. Albert’s mother, Rose, is a hard-worker, is portrayed with a tough skin but tender heart by Alyssa Bresnahan. Ted, his alcoholic, mean-tempered father portrayed by Boris McGiver, was always competitive with his own brother (T. Ryder Smith) who was wounded in the Boar War while Ted stayed home, viewed as a ne’er-do-well. After a segment of drunken overbidding with his brother, Ted finds he has acquired a horse that is a hunter, useless for farm work Albert, however, forms a bond with the horse, names him Joey and the two become inseparable, understanding each other’s signals and moods. When war breaks out, Albert’s father sells the horse to the cavalry, leaving his son inconsolable. Albert runs away, lies about his age and joins the infantry, determined to find Joey, who has already been sent to France.

The harsh savagery of war is potent in this production with dramatic contrast between the boy and his horse riding across the bucolic countryside of Devon and the barrage and annihilation on French battlefields. The tension of battle builds forcefully, offering notable performances. As Albert, Seth Numrich is compelling, catching the heart of the audience as forcefully as Joey. David (David Pegram) is a young infantryman who becomes Albert’s friend and in whom Albert confides. Their innocence as teenaged boys is challenged when they are thrust into the bombardment, digging trenches, struggling to survive and suffering wounds. Touching performances also come from two officers: Lieutenant James Nicholls is a local artist from Devon played by Stephen Plunkett, who promises Albert he will take care of Joey. Peter Hermann is convincing as a sympathetic German officer, Hauptmann Friedrich Muller, who loves horses and at a vital point, saves the wounded Joey by having him pull an ambulance cart.

The sets by Rae Smith, who also designed costumes and drawings, are spare but dramatically lighted by Paule Constable and the explosive sound design by Christopher Shutt. What looks like a banner of torn paper is slashed across the sky, with Smith’s drawings, dates, and projections. Two balladeers, Kate Pfaffl and Liam Robinson, further add to the era’s ambiance. The stars of this production, however, are Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones of the Handspring Puppet Company who lead other puppeteers to bring alive the horses with amazing movement and expressiveness. Other touches of puppetry include flying birds, ravenous crows and the whimsy of an audaciously self-confident goose.

In England, Michael Morpurgo wrote the original children’s novel that was later adapted by Nick Stafford with the Handspring Puppet Company of South Africa. War Horse premiered in 2007 at the National Theatre in London. The story occasionally leans toward sentimentality, yet its simple progression of plot persuasively balances the love of a boy and his horse with the horrors of war and the relentless tension of stultifying fear and the fierce scramble to survive.

While War Horse tells a dramatic, action-packed tale, there are no high-tech helicopters, tanks, or high-wire swings across the theater. The trauma of war is trenchantly evoked by expert lighting and sound and carefully-crafted puppetry movements. War Horse is a tribute to creativity and imagination and how it can produce an emotionally memorable and riveting theater experience.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

April 17, 2011

Vivian Beaumont - Lincoln Center Theater

150 West 65th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam

April 14, 2011 – open ended

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Ghetto Klown - March 2011

You can take this to the bank -- John Leguizamo is truly a multi-faceted performer. In his new one-man show, Ghetto Klown, he is a fireball igniting the stage with kinetically nonstop physical movement, dancing, singing, impressions, hilarious anecdotes. Through it all, he builds to a truth that brings warmth and heartache to a story that is crazed with obscenities, frustration and rage. At the same time, it is comic and tender and much of it is in rapid fire Spanish. Surprisingly, you get the gist of it. Like everyone’s life, Leguizamo’s is a work in progress, and in this solo tour de force, he throws it all at the audience like a big stage therapy session. Chronologically, it may be off-kilter, but the essence is here, searching for truth and meaning.

Most of Leguizamo’s previous one-man shows, Mambo Mouth, Spic-O-Rama, Freak, Sexaholix... A Love Story, were award winners. However, they turned out to be prequels to Ghetto Klown, his most impressive. This continues his tale of growing up Latino, struggling towards a career, coping with crazy love affairs, and coping with relentless frustration by the relationships with his family. He was used by his bizarre mother, castigated by his hot-tempered and demanding father, and he had an aging grandfather with whom he tried to communicate.

Always a show-off, he traces his subway ride from Queens to Manhattan to Hollywood to Broadway. Aiming for a show-biz career, he studied under Lee Strasberg and moved into films, and stage. A hilarious anecdote reveals how he auditioned for the film remake of Romeo and Juliet with a chipped tooth and compromised diction. His film roles, however, proved unsatisfying, and Leguizamo moved on.

Much of the play involves Ray-Ray, his best friend from childhood, one of the characters he impersonates. Others include the darkly comical portrayals of film colleagues, Steven Seagal, Al Pacino and Kurt Russell. The more introspective Act II involves his second marriage and children. He manages forgiveness and understanding as far as he can. His rigid, uncompromising father will never change.

Fisher Steven’s bent for directing is proven in this flowing production, although the play could use a bit of editing. The set is simple but creative, featuring a projection board for photos, film clips and videos, one repeatedly showing Leguizamo deep in depression. On one side is a desk and chairs and a phone he uses to speak to his agent.

John Leguizamo is at home on the stage, undergoing his spontaneous, free and funny therapy sessions of his life. This is his milieu and as he says, “This is masterful… I’m dissing, I’m cursing, I’m fighting myself, it’s raunchy, it’s nasty and most of all, it is freaky.”

Elizabeth Ahlfors

March 24, 2011

Lyceum Theater

149 West 45 St.

March 22, 2011 – July 10, 2011

Also appearing in TotalTheater.com

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Good People - March 2011

There isn’t much luck of the Irish for the Boston Southies in David Lindsay-Abaire’s excellent new play, Good People. Portrayed by a six-person ensemble led by Frances McDormand, the desperation of the working class is tough stuff leavened with gritty humor. Blame it on the economy, blame it on bad breaks, blame it on their own lack of ambition or talent, but life is a struggle. Their hope seems to ride on some stroke of luck, either landing a menial job or scoring at the bingo table.

What happens to working class people when there is no work? Lindsay-Abaire has a contemporary theme but the heart of the play is universal with characters who are strong, funny, and multilayered. Frances McDormand portrays Margie, a sarcastic, tough-talking survivor with bad breaks. When she loses her job as a cashier in the Dollar Store, she is left with horrendous debts and a severely disabled adult daughter. The babysitter is undependable, a crusty landlady, Dottie (Estelle Parsons), who waits for the moment when Margie can’t pay the rent so her son can get the apartment. With no job prospects on the horizon, that opportunity is looming.

Margie’s girlfriend, Jean, played with snappy smarts by Becky Ann Baker, urges her to reconnect with a boyfriend, Mike (Tate Donovan), who escaped from the neighborhood with a scholarship and medical school. He is back 30 years later, and Margie awkwardly shows up at his office. Circling him in a well-crafted scene of defensiveness and biting tension, she takes in the diplomas, the photos, reminding him about old times, before finally, and unsuccessfully, asking him for a job. Her curiosity about Mike’s younger, African-American wife and his home in an upscale suburb, prompts Margie to finagle an invitation to his upcoming birthday party. He later cancels the party but she shows up anyway, and it is on this night in Act II where emotions explode, old secrets are revealed and fierce passions are released. Er

Director David Sullivan paces the play with sensitivity and insight. Each character is on target. Estelle Parsons provides laughs as the self-serving landlady whose “art” career is making rabbits out of Styrofoam and flower pots. Jean scores as Margie’s supportive pal. Tate Donovan is excellent, assuming the upscale smoothness of his position yet inside, he is still the hard-bitten, street-smart Mikey from Southie. He had learned to describe himself to his wife as a kid from the projects but neglected to reveal the violence, racism and selfishness underscoring that image. Renée Elise Goldsberry plays Kate, his wife, a sensitive lawyer with a natural poise, rising to passion only in her fierce opinions about motherhood versus personal pride. This leads to a face-off with Margie escalating to passionate revelations about Mike. Patrick Carroll has a convincing Broadway debut as Stevie, who fires Margie and later surprises her in a move of generosity. Throughout the play, you do not take your eyes off Frances McDormand, her expressive face shadowed with desperation, and envy, her tongue quick with sarcasm and defensiveness.

John Lee Beatty’s set adds to the meticulous design of this production with turntables that unveil well-designed scenes, including a back alley with a dumpster and a living room in an upscale suburb.

David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People is a thought-provoking study of the American dream, weighing luck versus initiative, pride versus responsibility, and the truth and baggage weaving through the lives of ordinary “good people.”

Elizabeth Ahlfors

March 5, 2011

Manhattan Theatre Club

Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St

March 3, 2011 – May. 24, 2011

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The Whipping Man - February 2011

At New York City Center Stage 1, André Braugher leads the stellar three-person cast in Matthew Lopez’ The Whipping Man, a provocative drama set in the waning days of the Civil War. Braugher stars as Simon, a freed slave, who is living with another freed slave, John (Andre Holland), in the wreckage of the DeLeon family home where they once served.

Director Doug Hughes deftly set up the three compelling characters with distinctive differences that eventually unfold with a gripping climax. Taking place on a rainy Virginia night in April 1865, the play opens when the door suddenly flies open and Caleb DeLeon (Jay Wilkison) staggers into the house. Caleb is the family scion, a Confederate soldier, severely wounded and trying to stay out of the hands of the army. The severity of the wound quickly jolts a dramatic urgency as Caleb depends on Simon to save his life by performing a drastic surgical measure. ughes

The twist here is that the three men are all Jews, Simon and John having taken the religion of the DeLeon family. Ironically, since this is the season of Passover, Simon and John want to hold a seder, celebrating their emancipation just as the Jews were freed from slavery in Egypt. Caleb, angry and in pain, is no longer interested in God or religion but he eventually agrees to join his former slaves to celebrate the holiday together. Simon commands the celebration, singing the spiritual, “Go Down, Moses,” linking the African-American bondage and the slavery of the Jews.

The responsibilities of each individual shift just as the new era presents uncertain challenges. While action is limited to the ruins of the once grand house, the intensity is boosted as each man unveils layers of his character and as their secrets are revealed. Middle-aged Simon is loyal and grounded and is quick to care for Caleb but also comments, that, "All these things you're telling me to do, by rights now you need to be asking me to do." Braugher keeps Simon’s dignity and sense of values until a final revelation leads to an emotional paroxysm.

Holland as the younger John, displays lofty dreams and lusty energy that blanket his seething revenge. He resents caring for his previous owner and regularly loots through neighboring rubble. As Caleb, Wilkison spends most of the play on a cot, recuperating -- surprisingly fast -- from his devastating wound. Now he is forced to face his accountability in the institution defined by the cruelty of the play’s title, The Whipping Man.

Atmospheric staging is impressive with John Lee Beatty’s convincing remains of a once-grand home, Jill B.C. DuBoff’s driving sounds of rain and thunder, and Ben Stanton’s foreboding lighting.

Matthew Lopez’ play is neatly-crafted and the characters, portrayed with muscular skill by the riveting André Braugher, Andre Holland, and Jay Wilkison, evoke an emotional portrait of a shattering time.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

February 13, 2011

Manhattan Theatre Club

City Center, Stage 1
131 West 55th Street

Jan. 13, 2011 – Mar. 27, 2011 (extended twice)

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Other Desert Cities - January 2011

Not surprisingly, Jon Robin Baitz, writer of Other Desert Cities at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater, is also the creator of television series, Brothers and Sisters. Like another Baitz play, Substance of Fire, these shows link on to the sensibilities of the American family. With a tight core, dysfunctional situations, and well-defined, smart characters, the Wyeths of Other Desert Cities would be as familiar as your own neighbors if they were not quite so rich, well-connected and witty. Portrayed by a stellar ensemble led by Stockard Channing as Polly Wyeth, retired screenwriter, and Stacy Keach as her husband, Lyman, retired movie actor, the Wasp/Jewish Wyeths display impressive Hollywood credentials and a tragic secret in their closet.

The time is Christmas Eve 2004 and the place is Palm Springs. After an absence of six years, Lyman and Polly’s daughter, Brooke (Elizabeth Marvel), once a promising novelist and a hospitalized depressive, has come home for the holidays. Her younger brother, Trip (Thomas Sadowski), producer of a courtroom reality TV show has arrived from Los Angeles. With their aunt, Silda Grauman (Linda Lavin), visiting after her latest rehab, you have a merging of conservative parents, liberal children, socialist aunt, flip-flopping morals, and the lubricating balm of liquor and pot. But you ain’t seen nothing yet. Brooke’s Christmas gift to this family is the manuscript of her second book that is about to be published.

The family reads it and is not happy. With focused direction by Joe Mantella, the shift from light, amusing family reunion to destruction is gradual with the actors smoothly switching gears. Writing about what you know can be risky and the Wyeths discover that Brooke has not written a novel but a memoir centered around a heartbreaking time in their family’s life concerning the loss of the eldest child, Henry. The family is fractured, tries to gain footing and again is rent apart before reaching a damaged reprieve. A coda is added at the end, a shaky finale to a shattering event.

Stocking Channing’s Polly is a political Mama Rose, an iron fist in a chic tunic. She once enjoyed a privileged seat in the higher Republican hierarchy and can be a rock of support -- with conditions -- when one of her brood is in trouble. Right now, her sister and former writing partner, Silda, is recuperating in her home from her latest alcohol binge. With whizzing verbal bullets, Channing and Lanin know which sibling buttons to push for efficient collateral damage.

Nevertheless, it is Brooke and Polly who come head to head about the publication of the book and everyone who may be involved. Elizabeth Marvel gets four stars, illuminating Brooke’s character with palpable conviction, a survivor just hanging on. As brother, Trip, Sadowski, like the others, has spot-on timing and is less liberal and more accommodating than Brooke, thus handling the family dynamic more easily. Stacy Keach ably controls a range of emotions, including a tender closeness to Brooke.

John Lee Beatty’s set design in chill desert tones shows gray stone walls and room furnishings in ecru and taupe. A lighted Christmas tree is meticulously decorated in white, with gold-wrapped presents underneath. David Zin dresses Channing and Keach in stylish Saks resort wear and Lavin in a colorful caftan. Brooke and Trip’s drab casual garb sharply makes its statement against Channing’s distinctive accessories and styled hair.

A smooth production tackling universal questions with all elements in place, Other Desert Cities deserves a move on up to Broadway.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

January 23, 2011

Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi Newhouse

150 West 65th Street

Jan. 13, 2011 – Feb. 27, 2011

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The Importance of Being Earnest - January 2011

The plot is twisted and preposterous, the characters silly and shallow, but The Importance of Being Earnest is one of Oscar Wilde’s most loved plays. A skewering satire, it boasts some of the wittiest dialogue in theater piercing the hypocrisies of the Victorian society in which Wilde lived. To crown this Roundabout Theatre Company production, director Brian Bedford assumes the role of dauntless Lady Bracknell, a female “gorgon” in brocade ruled by opinions like, "I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.”

The three-act play with two intermissions is now revived at the American Airlines Theatre. The story involves two Ernests, neither of whom is actually named Ernest. Algernon Moncrieff, (Santino Fontana) feels that his life in the country is stifling so he created an alter-ego, Ernest, who lives in London. When Algernon runs off to visit the ailing “Ernest,” he is actually on the town with his chum, Jack Wothing (David Furr).

Jack is in love with Gwendolyn (Sara Topham), who is Lady Bracknell’s daughter and Algernon’s cousin. Since she tells him she can only love a man named Ernest, a name she feels inspires confidence, Jack tells her his name is Ernest and they get engaged. (Yes, it is ridiculous.) Lady Bracknell forbids the marriage, after learning that Jack/Ernest is an orphan: “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

Adding to the dizziness, Algernon discovers that Jack has his own secret country life. He is the guardian of a young lady, Cecily (Charlotte Parry) who lives on Jack’s estate in the country with her governess/companion, Miss Prism (Dana Ivey), who has eyes for the local reverend Chasuble (Paxton Whitehead). Algernon decides to secretly visit Jack’s estate and surprise the mysterious Cecily, saying he is Jack’s fictional reprobate brother, Ernest. It is love at first sight for Algernon and Cecile. When Jack, Gwendolyn and Lady Bracknell arrive at the estate, identities and lineages collide. Eventually -- and with complicated manipulations -- the problem of the two false Ernests is eventually cleared up. "I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of being Earnest," exclaims one of the new Ernests.

Wilde’s characters provide a ping-pong of smart, hilarious dialogue. Fontana and Furr toss their lines with a refined superficiality. Gwendolyn is exquisitely dainty who believes, “"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing." Charlotte Parry’s Cecile is a young charmer but somewhat bland. In his Act I appearance, Paul O'Brien is outstanding as Algernon’s major domo, Lane. Ivey and Whitehead present convincing portrayals. Bedford, however, is peerless, spicing Lady Bracknell with stern authority, landing her lines firmly, her voice lowering or rising with polished nuance. The laughs flow from actors who never let the ball drop.

Sets and costumes by Desmond Heeley and Paul Huntley’s wig and hair design all add spring-like flavoring to the sparkling ambience of this production. He dresses Lady Bracknell in formidable elaborate fabrics with exaggerated hats.

After 116 years, The Importance of Being Earnest remains a treat for audiences. Unfortunately for Wilde, shortly after the play’s first performance, he became involved in a libel trial that led to imprisonment for two years at hard labor for being a homosexual, an assault by the society he skewered so deftly in this play.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

January 20, 2011

American Airlines Theater

112 West 42nd Street

January 13, 2011 – March 6, 2011

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Dracula - January 2011

If not for Dana Kenn’s versatile and mobile sets, Chris DelVecchio’s dramatic sound design, and special effects by Greg Meeh, the current off-Broadway version of Dracula would be fatally anemic. As it is, Bram Stoker’s Gothic thriller, adapted by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, while offering some technical panache and occasional laughs, is a dusty, old-fashioned melodrama with few drops of lifeblood still oozing out.

Thirty-plus years after Frank Langella’s dashing Broadway, and subsequent film, interpretation of the bloodthirsty count of Transylvania, director Paul Alexander fills the Little Shubert Theater stage with smoke, thunder and lightening, strobes, shadowy bats, creepy sounds, and thespian theatricality. Unfortunately, even when displayed with all its grisly expressionism, the tale itself is a sketchy pastiche with zero chemistry between the bloodthirsty count and his latest victim, Lucy.

It’s a familiar story. Accompanying an outbreak of mysterious murders, a strange malady of weakness is striking young women. When Lucy (Emily Bridges), becomes a victim of the illness, her father, Dr. Seward (Timothy Jerome) who runs a sanitarium, and her fiancé, Jonathan Harker (Jake Silbermann), become worried. They join Professor Abraham van Helsing (George Hearn), a vampire hunter, to search for answers to the suspicious events, and surprise, surprise, all eyes turn to the mysterious Count Dracula who lives in a nearby castle and prowls through the night.

George Hearn and Timothy Jerome play the elder authority figures with confidence, and Silbermann (coming from the daytime serial world) is satisfactory as Lucy’s fiancé. Emily Bridges, however, while pale, is not a convincing ailing Lucy, showing only flickers of interest in Dracula. John Buffalo Mailer has the part that must be the most fun to play, Renfield, the Batboy inmate with a Louisiana drawl, who creeps down walls and overacts his crazy heart out.

As his Cockney caretaker, Rob O'Hare, is winning with one of the few accents in the play that holds firm throughout. Katharine Luckinbill plays the earnest though unreliable maid with pert piquancy.

Michel Altieri as Dracula, unfortunately, despite flamboyant cape-flinging, hissing and leering glances, evokes neither a menacing vampire nor a lone creature searching for true love. In his American debut, this Italian actor and singer strains for drama and captures caricature, and caricature is what finally stamps directorAlexander’s rendition of this old folklore.

While vampires are currently well nourished in the book and film world, they have been anemic on the New York stage - witness Dance of the Vampires, Dracula the Musical, and Lestat. This version of Dracula must join that woeful company. Maybe 500 years is too long a run for any live drama.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

January 2, 2011

Little Shubert Theater

442 West 42nd Street

January 5, 2011 –January 9, 2011

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Driving Miss Daisy - December, 2010

When Miss Daisy peers intently at Hoke and says, “You’re my best friend,” women grope for tissues and men blink their eyes. That simple statement speaks for the scope of Alfred Uhry’s 90-minute play that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Like the rest of this low-keyed, touching story, it is a moment that grows organically out of the play, believable and satisfactory.

Originally presented off-Broadway and later as a successful film, when the play recently came to Broadway’s Golden Theater, two guaranteed audience magnets, Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones, were brought in to play the leads. Redgrave portrays Miss Daisy, a single-minded, 72-year-old Atlanta Jewish widow, and Jones plays her somewhat younger African-American chauffeur, Hoke, both interpreting their well-crafted characters with empathy and comprehension. Miss Daisy is a financially comfortable, secure lady who knows what she wants, is always sure she is right and knows her place in society. She also knows Hoke’s place. Hoke, experienced dealing with Southern white women like Miss Daisy, waits it out patiently but persistently.

Skillfully directed by David Esbjornson, the story starts in 1972 and flashes back through the ‘fifties and ‘sixties, the decades of social upheavals in the south. Against Miss Daisy wishes, her son, Boolie (Boyd Davis ) hires Hoke to be his mother’s chauffeur, since she has had several car accidents. As expected, Miss Daisy obstinately refuses to be driven around, objects to even having Hoke work for her. Hoke learns to play the waiting game and eventually she comes around. Without lapsing into the maudlin, a wary trust develops between the two.

Jones, despite being quite a bit older than his character, injects dignity into his required deference, knowing when to stand firm but always suitably respectful as the society of the day dictated. Redgrave stands ramrod straight as Miss Daisy, never letting her guard down, always respectable until the end when she admits not only her dependence upon Hoke but her love and respect for him. The feeling each has for the other is obvious and is the focus of the character-driven story.

Boolie is a caring son, watching out for his mother but living his own life despite Miss Daisy’s disapproval of his wife. Gaines, winner of four Tony Awards, understands and appreciates Boolie, deftly balancing long-suffering with loyalty. When he stands up to his mother, he is firm, as when he refuses to go to the Martin Luther King benefit dinner because of business repercussions.

With John Lee Beatty’s stage design more suitable for an off-Broadway production, the set is remarkably bare. Costumes by Jane Greenwood are restricted to a chauffeur’s uniform for Jones and a deep pink dress for Miss Daisy, except for the benefit dinner when she is helped into a long velvet cloak, obviously a garment worn in her more social days.

The performances of indomitable Vanessa Redgrave, James Earl Jones and versatile Boyd Gaines reinforce the universal audience appeal of Driving Miss Daisy.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

December 15, 2010

Golden Theater

252 West 45th Street

October 7, 2010 - Extended to April 9, 2011

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A Life in the Theater - October, 2010

Yes, A Life in the Theater was written by David Mamet, but folks, this is not the David Mamet you know, that rapid-paced, caustic, socio-political wordsmith of controversial plays like Oleanna, Speed-The-Plow and Race. Over three decades ago, when Mamet wrote A Life in the Theater, he was a kinder, gentler Mamet, a struggling actor himself. This work reveals nostalgia toward that time in his life and empathy toward the passage of time and the grueling life upon the wicked stage.

This two-hander stars Patrick Stewart as Robert, a veteran ham and T.R. Knight (Grey’s Anatomy) as John, young and eager to learn from the older man until he gains his own footing and eventually loses his unassuming innocence. Robert and John are actors, not stars, who labor at their craft in a repertory company. Mamet sketched their characters and slightly plumped them out during 90 minutes of quick scenes, some even as short as one sentence. Directed by Neil Pepe, it is obviously a quick-flowing work, focused on life in the theater with nothing about these characters’ private lives.

The interaction between Stewart and Knight is convincing, their portrayals believable and the characters’ need for each other is obvious. Robert preens in his role of mentor, often delivering lofty lectures about the theater and/or life, with resounding statements like, “I'm saying as in a grocery store that you cannot separate the time one spends . . . that is, it's all part of one's life." At first John is glad for Robert’s attention and even occasional praise from the older actor.

The productions of the repertory company are vaudeville lampoons of period dramas. In one, the two actors portray sailors lost-at-sea with outdated corny dialogue. Says Robert’s character, a grizzled old salt, “You shouldn't let it get you down, 'cause that's what life on the sea is about."

Stewart’s is the heftier role, and his comic touches effectively jar against his self-serving professionalism as he discusses his fondness for cold cream to remove makeup, and as he prances around in his outrageous wigs, and suffers stage mishaps like a broken pants zipper. Knight has hilarious moments as well and his comic flair serves him well. He is wonderfully flustered when he misses his cue in a French Revolution production and also during a surgery mishap in a dreadful hospital spoof. The humor and wistfulness of the show is carefully balanced as Robert and John’s relationship eventually shifts, Robert revealing his loneliness, acknowledgement of getting old, and jealousy of John’s youth and possibly his future success. While John still respects him, he grows impatient with the aging, self-obsessed veteran he once admired.

The creative elements are top-of-the-line here. With shadowy indoor lighting by Kenneth Posner, set designer Santo Loquasto placed the curtain as the backdrop so when Robert and John are performing, their backs are to the audience. The rest of the stage is roomy enough for speedy set stages for makeup tables, staircases, and numerous other quick settings for the many short scenes. Costumes by Laura Bauer and Charles LaPointe’s wigs all look like they’ve seen years of hard wear in an erstwhile theater company.

Like life itself, you’ll find some hearty laughs and some heartache in A Life in the Theater, although its snappy, lightweight scenes make this play enjoyable but not great theater. Perhaps most interesting is the glimpse it offers of one of today’s hottest playwrights as he was back in the day. A line from Showboat’s “Life Upon the Wicked Stage,” obviously applies to David Mamet as well as his two persevering characters -- 
“There is no doubt
You're crazy about
Your awful stage!”
 

Elizabeth Ahlfors

October 23, 2010

A Life in the Theater

Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre

236 W. 45th St.

Oct. 13, 2010 to Jan. 2, 1011

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The Pitmen Painters - October 2010

With touches of Art, Red and Billy Elliott, the current import from London's National Theatre is Lee Hall’s The Pitmen Painters, now premiering at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. This is a touching, often inspiring true story of hard-working, uneducated miners (“pitmen”) from northern England’s Cumberland district who discover their artistic side. The Pitmen Painters spans from 1934 to 1947, and the results of their discovered creative talents remain in a permanent collection at the Woodhorn Colliery Museum in Newcastle.

With efficient diversity and personality, director Max Roberts quickly sets up the five miners, later known as The Ashington Group. Sleekly, he directs a gritty story. It begins in a barren YMCA hall, where union leader, George Brown (Deka Walmsley), hires a visiting instructor, Robert Lyon (Ian Kelly), to teach the pitmen how to appreciate art. Five men sign up for various reasons, even as basic as just getting out of the house. Besides Brown, they include Oliver Kilbourn (Christopher Connel), the most talented of the group; a dental technician, Harry Wilson (Michael Hodgson); an amusing, Jimmy Floyd (David Whitaker); and a Young Lad (Brian Lonsdale) who is out of work.

The instructor, bringing Renaissance slides with him, arrives with the idea of reviewing the history of art with his new students, but he is met with zero enthusiasm from the group who had no education past the age of 10. To engage their interest, he tells them to create their own artworks, and slowly, they give it a try. They find that painting, sketching or etching are surprisingly effective ways to interpret their live and society. The results are eventually an outpouring of truth, wit, or horror in styles that range from primitive to expressionistic. Their journey toward sophistication is not easy. One humorous sequence has the instructor bring in a young lady (Lisa McGrillis) for a live modeling session. When the provincial miners realize she is going to take her clothes off, they are unnerved. While titillated, her nudity challenges their values.

Their confidence grows when the group is brought to London and Edinburgh. They eventually find their work can actually share space in museums and make money from these talents they never knew they had. This success is helped by an art patron, Helen Sutherland (Phillippa Wilson), who is

particularly drawn towards Oliver. The importance of art and society becomes evident as they talk about their progress to the audience, a compelling ending to Act I.

Act I is tight and intriguing, but Act II loses much of the production’s tight intimacy. The talented Oliver is faced with accepting the largesse of the patron or staying with the group. The instructor takes a turn of his own. Finally the politics of the day changes the social structure and economy of the northern district and life is changed for everyone.

Nevertheless, the actors are outstanding, all delivering individual characteristics with humor, pathos and earthiness. The Newcastle dialect is occasionally difficult to catch but Lee Hall has scripted an articulate tale with realistic dialogue, drawing definitive characters. The play is an overall treat. With lighting by Douglas Kuhrt, set designer, Gary McCann’s three screens sitting on the spare stage are effective displays for the pitmen’s artwork. When we first see the art, it is a surprising thrill. McCann’s costumes are appropriate for the time and characters.

The Pitmen Painters was inspired by William Feaver's book, Pitmen Painters: The Ashington Group 1934-1984, and the production, if not perfect, is engaging and a hopeful sign of success for this Broadway season.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

October 3, 2010

The Pitmen Painters

Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre

261 West 47th Street

September 30 to December 12, 2010

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Brief Encounter - September 2010

Brief Encounter, based on Noel Coward’s short play, Still Life and David Lean’s memorable 1945 film, leaves its black-and-white imprint and becomes a Crayola homage of music, laughter and flying sequences, in its current production at Studio 54. Adapted and directed by Emma Rice, it is fabulously theatrical and surrounded by as much show-biz pizzazz as you can get. She brings in film projections, songs, dances, puppets and a lively cast led by Tristan Sturrock (Alec) and Hannah Yelland (Laura). Yet, Rice shows a serious intent and respect for the work. At the core, there is a central link back to that romantic intimacy that World War II era films did so well, with Rachmaninoff’s sweeping score, star-struck lovers and trains passing in the night. Gimmicks, yes, distractions, yes, but there’s that irresistible unfulfilled romance, and it all fits like a storybook puzzle.

Brief Encounter, one of the September shows opening the 2010-2011 Broadway season, is pure entertainment and it’s a treat. The time is 1938, it opens in a train station tea room with a cinder in the eye. Laura, a conventional married suburban mother, is waiting for her train to Milford, when an ash flies in her eye. Fortunately, a doctor, Alec, also married, is in the station and he removes the ash. Gratefulness leads quickly to attraction and zooms into passion. They plan meetings that become rendezvous. At the end, their encounter was intense, and as the title states, brief. The era, the morality of the middle-class, guilt and circumstance battle effectively against passion. The ending is heartbreakingly dramatic but inevitable.

What sets this production apart from Coward’s play and the later film is Emma Rice’s enhancement of the romance with surrounding stories and somewhat outlandish, robust characters. Annette McLaughlin (Myrtle) and Dorothy Atkinson (Beryl) work in the train tea room and enjoy their own dalliances. Unlike the middle-class staidness, sassy Myrtle, with her blonde upsweep hairdo, joins swaggering stationmaster, Albert (Joseph Alessi) in carefree hungry lust, dancing and catching moments to duck behind the counter. Alessi plays both Albert and Laura’s surprisingly understanding husband, Fred. Myrtle’s assistant, young, tiny Beryl is in the throngs of discovering the introduction to first love with lean, lanky cigarette vendor, Stanley (Gabriel Ebert). Beryl’s rendition of “Mad About the Boy” is comically sensuous. Other Noel Coward songs are performed by the cast/onstage combo. Notable is, "Go Slow, Johnny," tenderly rendered as Laura and Alec are drowning in the temptation of their passion.

The audience is lightly brought into the play before the show, when cast members wander up the aisles entertaining the audience. The actors playing Alec and Laura are seated in the front row and walk up to the stage only for their scenes. Sound designer, Simon Baker, provides sweeps of wind, bending Laura and Alec backwards in moments of passion. Neil Murray’s fantasy set design allows Alec and Laura to “enter” the train in the film sequences with projections are by Gemma Carrington and Jon Driscoll. As their faces are zoomed larger, Laura’s grief at the end is especially compelling. Murray’s well-detailed 1940’s costume designs further merge illusion and reality.

Admittedly, the romance so loved by fans of the film is vastly diluted here, yet this production has a charm of its own with its fresh interpretation of a short, unfulfilled intensity of two lives stunted by circumstances. While the recurring theme of Laura and Alec’s passion is out of the proportion to the rowdy theatrics surrounding it, it has a tangible and lingering poignancy.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

September 30, 2010

Brief Encounter
Studio 54

254 West 54th Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue

September 28 to December 5, 2010

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2009 – 2010 SEASON

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Tin Pan Alley Rag - July 2009

Imagine, pop music meets ragtime. Or more specifically, Irving Berlin, self-proclaimed "King of Ragtime," meets Scott Joplin, unarguably, "The King of Ragtime." This enticing "meeting" could illuminate a building block of the American popular songbook. Mark Saltzman's (Altar Boys) fictional endeavor, however, barely tickles the imagination, much less entertains and illuminates.

Tin Pan Alley Rag is a fluffy amalgamation of drama and musical produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theater. Michael Therriault portrays the brash, confident Irving Berlin and Michael Boatman is a dignified and dedicated Scott Joplin. The characters are superficial, revealing little about themselves, but there is a high spot here, and that is the music itself and the its conflict with making money. This should drive the play, which only comes off with ho-hum familiarity. By the end, we must be satisfied with the realization that that while both men created memorable music, and both shared similar influences, they were ruled by different creative energies.

The meeting occurs around 1915. Joplin shows up at Ted Snyder and Irving Berlin's music publishing office on "Tin Pan Alley," so-called because of the cacophony of sounds heard on the street as songwriters hawked their tunes from office to office. Joplin, had already written a hit called, "Maple Leaf Rag," but his lofty passion is to move past popular music and get Treemonisha, his ragtime opera, published.

An opera! Berlin exclaims, "Oy!"

While Joplin is stiff and self-contained, Berlin is a tough, lower-East Side survivor with a talent for hit tunes and a savvy sense of what makes a hit. Not just a successful songwriter, Berlin is also a shrewd businessman, with a sharp eye on the dollar. These differences, and the music versus profit conflict, are not presented with enough depth to sustain a drama.

The play stuffs so much into such a short time that it does not run with any fluidity, nor is director Stafford Arima able to ignite fire from these capable actors with sketchy roles. Therriault played Motel in the revival of "Fiddler on the Roof" and Boatman was seen in "Master Harold...and the Boys." Here they seem uninspired by their characters. Even when they finally reach some understanding of each other, the incident lacks the heart to make it truly compelling. Poignant? Sure. Berlin's young wife, Dorothy, succumbed after contracting typhoid fever on their honeymoon in Cuba. Joplin lost his wife, Freddie, to pneumonia, just weeks after their wedding. Both men are still dealing with their grief. It should be three-hanky moment but in this audience, not even a tissue.

Like the leads, the secondary characters, Michael McCormick, Idara Victor, Rosena M. Hill, Derrick Cobey, and James Judy, suitably portray their varied roles.

Beowulf Boritt's sets revolve to reveal differing locations, one in Cuba showing the Berlins as happy newlyweds. These scenes also include basic interpretations of how the tunes came about or how they were named. For example, a famous publisher comes into the small Maple Leaf Club, hears Joplin playing a tune, and decides to publish it. What's it called? He asks Joplin, who spontaneously names it, "Maple Leaf Rag."

Incidentally, Michael Patrick Walker and Brian Cimmet play the tunes on offstage pianos.

Despite the flaws, there is the music to appreciate. Berlin's "Play a Simple Melody" with its catchy counterpoint played by Joplin, remains irresistible. “You don’t deserve to be this brilliant,” Joplin says to Berlin. Other memorable tunes like "You'd Be Surprised" and “The Entertainer” just emphasize, unfortunately, how this synthetic production gets in the way of the right stuff, which is the music.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

July 15, 2009

The Tin Pan Alley Rag
Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre

111 West 46th Street between 6th and 7th Avenue

July 14 to September 6, 2009

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2008 – 2009 SEASON

A Body of Water – January 2009

What you don't know won't hurt you, they say. It can, however, can be disorienting. Just how disorienting is what Lee Blessing's play, A Body of Water, explores at the Primary Stages.

What if you wake up one morning and meet a stranger in the living room, only he says it's his living room? Not only do you not recognize the room or each other, but neither of you recognizes the house. "What a predicament?" as Jimmy Durante would say.

Where we would be without the framework of memory? How important is personal memory in our lives? When we suddenly have no recollection of our history, or who we are or where we are or where we came from, no memories of happiness and despair, trauma or exhilaration, what are we? Most admit it would be a disconcerting, frustrating experience.

How suddenly this amnesic situation came on with these people, we don't know. Two characters, played by Christine Lahti and Michael Cristofer, are poised and articulate, a middle-aged, well-off couple, not suffering from Alzheimer's, as far as we can tell. At first, they do not seem particularly frantic, just curious. They chitchat about not remembering anything but they do not explore the house, scout out the books and records that might give a clue. They do flash their robes open, hoping for a familiar mole or birthmark, but nothing. They indulge in some word play, flirtation, scratching around for the truth. They do not yet realize the terror they eventually acknowledge.

When a young woman arrives with coffee and donuts just as she does every morning, she is a stranger to them. She tells them her name is Wren and they are named Avis (Lahti) and Moss (Cristofer). Perhaps out of her own frustration, perhaps vindictively, Wren toys with them, inventing stories. She is their daughter, she says, or their caretaker, or their defense attorney. She tells them they smothered and bludgeoned their 11-year-old daughter to death. She lets Avis and Moss believe each tale, then shifts the rug beneath them and they are again disoriented, and so are we, trying to reassess how the pieces all fit together.

Lahti is an attractive, intelligent Avis with a dry humor that gets her through the early part of the show. She convinces us of her subtle growing panic when she finds she has to trust Wren and leave the security of the house. Her use of body language is authentic, wrapping her robe just a little tighter as her confusion mounts. Early in the play, just a hint of a smile crosses her face during her look-see under Moss' robe, carefully using kitchen tongs to poke around.

Cristopher is a versatile and energetic actor, playing Moss with sympathy and a discomfiture he reluctantly faces. The two look as if they could be married.

Laura Odeh has the unenviable role of Wren, a character frighteningly unlikeable. Whatever else she is, Wren is cruel. When she tells Avis and Moss of the murder, she justifies the story as trying to shock them into reality, and pushes it further when she forces them to look at the morgue photos of the murdered child.

In this New York debut at Primary Stages, Neil Patel created a set indicating three floor-to-ceiling walls overlooking the water and trees. He furnishes the room with the unobtrusive taste of educated people. Their costumes by Candice Donnelly are casually chic, appropriate for people of comfortable means. The lighting by Jeff Croiter indicates passing time, with falling leaves, darkening skies, and rain. Bart Fasbender adds terrifying intermittent sounds of cacophonous piano and strings.

The play efficiently runs for 90 minutes without an intermission. Director Maria Mileaf is adept at focusing on the point of Blessing's play and keeps the actors' characterizations spare. The ending still dissatisfied. Is only one person alive with the other living only in memory? And what about Wren? Are Avis and Moss totally in her care and control?

The interesting question of the importance of personal history gets conversation going until you leave the theatre and walk to the end of the block. It fails, however, to unleash emotionally the terror that this might actually happen to you. Even if there are no answers offered, the question intrigues.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

October 10, 2008

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Irena's Vow - October 2008

With intensity and conviction, Tovah Feldshuh brings the stirring story of Irena Gut Opdyke to the Baruch Performing Arts Center. Written by Dan Gordon, Irena's Vow revives the belief that good is powerful and heroes can be discovered at the most horrendous moments. In the face of fear and despair during World War II, Irena did the right thing. She knew she could be killed. She knew what she planned would be difficult. Tovah Feldshuh elicits the strength and fragility of this young Catholic woman who saved Jewish workers in occupied Poland because it was the right thing to do.

When Feldshuh walks onstage, she portrays Irena as 70-something woman now living in the United States, poised, wearing high, thin heels and dressed with tailored style. After years of hearing the story of the Nazi holocaust denied, Irena has come to speak to a group of high school students and tell them of a time when she was just a little older than they are now. As she begins, Feldshuh trades her stylish pumps for a pair of low-heeled black sensible shoes. Her body lightens and evokes the energy of a young Polish woman who is studying nursing near the eastern front. She is hard working and determined but with a sense of humor, qualities Feldshuh skillfully brings forth throughout the play. They help illustrate why Irena made the choices she did, and why those she helped trusted her with their lives.

While she was studying nursing, Irena was captured by the invading Russian soldiers and raped. She was then sent into German occupied Poland and forced into

labor. A pretty blonde who spoke German, Irena found that by stretching the truth about her domestic skills, she could get a job as a housekeeper for German Major Rugemer, overseeing a dozen Jewish laundry and kitchen workers. Irena's life took another turn when she was shopping at the food market and saw the S.S. round up and kill local Jews. Most haunting was the vision of one soldier grabbing an infant from his mother and slamming him to the ground. She could not stand by and watch any longer.

Irena found hiding places for the Jews in Major Rugemer's kitchen, then in the basement and finally through a tunnel to a gazebo, knowing they would all be killed if found. She hid them for two years, her conviction strong and encouraging.

Thomas Ryan treads a risky path playing the German Major Rugemer who showed his vulnerability in his feelings for Irena. When he found she had been hiding the Jews, he promised to keep the secret if she became his mistress. A chilling moment was the pleasure taken by Rugemer's superior, Strumbannfuher Rokita (John Stanisci) as he explained how the growing restrictions on the Jews -- forbidding them into the parks, wearing yellow stars --- trained them to be placid instead of inciting them to fight for their lives.

Important to remember is that this is an historic documentary. It may seem like either over-the-top or down-to-the depths, depending on your viewpoint. When one of the Jewish women got pregnant, it would have been overly dramatic if it were not true. Against her religion, Irena was persuaded to get supplies for an abortion but the woman decided to have the child and the other Jews supported her. The outcome of this situation forms a poignant arc at the end of the play.

The story moves vividly under Michael Parva's tight direction, helping the supporting cast elicit singular personalities. Parva keeps the universal focus of the story through Irena's eyes and the historical accuracy is bolstered by Alex Koch's projections. Kevin Judge's somber set has several sections separated by steps. Astrid Bucker's costumes and Leah J. Lukas' wig designs are appropriate for the WWII era and the circumstances of the characters.

The word "heroic" is often used loosely, but at the core, a hero recognizes the clutch of fear and instead of turning, he confronts it, not because it is his job, but because it is right. Tovah Feldshuh's portrayal of Irena Gut Opdyke again proves that good can triumph over evil. This story has a positive ending, but the fact that holocausts occur over and over again reinforces the fact that heroic people exist and their stories need to be told and celebrated over and over again.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

October 17, 2008

The Seagull - October 2008

The Royal Court Theatre production of The Seagull comes to the Walter Kerr Theatre brimming with Anton Chekhov's layered relationships and dialogue that reveals only part of the story. In this finely tuned population of ten interconnected characters, each veiled with personal secrets and yearnings, the stage crackles with turmoil and life-threatening frustrations. This is the third production of The Seagull in New York this year, and if three is the charm, here it is.

"I describe life," said Anton Chekhov, who called his plays comedies. His comedy of life, however, is reflected through Russian eyes, balanced by a healthy dose of tragedy. Here, The Seagull focuses its absurdist seesaw balances romance and artistic frustration.

Says Masha, garbed in black, "I'm in mourning for my life." So is everyone else.

Translated with a contemporary sensitivity by Christopher Hampton and directed by Ian Rickson, the comedy comes through irony and sarcasm. The laughter is not from the belly but the mind. Rickson smoothly shifts the emotions like a kaleidoscope.

What sparkles on the austere stage is riveting Kristin Scott Thomas as Arkadina, whirling and flirting, constantly demanding attention. She is totally involved in herself as the world around her splinters in anguish and disappointment. Arkadina is not an evil person, just half-empty and fully self-centered. She is an actress of a certain age, excused for her theatrical flamboyance. Self-preservation rules Arkadina, characterized when she leaves a skimpy tip to split between three hard-working servants. It is a dream part for an actress, and in her Broadway debut, Kristin Scott Thomas relishes in it.

Romance links the characters like a daisy chain. Arkadina loves writer Trigorin (Peter Sarsgaard) as deeply as she can love anyone. Trigorin, undependable and faithless, similarly loves Arkadina. He lusts, however, after a neighbor, young actress Nina, who loves both Trigorin and Arkadina's son, the haunted writer Konstantin (Mackenzie Crook), who is in love with Nina. Masha, the estate keeper's daughter, also loves Konstantin and is frustrated with her hopelessly devoted husband Medvedienko (Pierce Quigley). Her father, Sharaev (Julian Gamble) is married to Polina, played by Ann Doud, who has a tenuous relationship with Dr. Dorn.

As the cynical doctor dryly observes, "How neurotic everyone is!"

I'll say. Just another family drama.

The cast comes from the London production, except for Sarsgaard. He is disappointing, failing to capture Trigorin's moody uneasiness or his passion for the young Nina. Kristin Scott Thomas is a captivating diva. As Arkadina, she effectively reveals layers of vulnerability, her angled face eloquent in unveiling tangled emotions, especially when dealing with Konstantin. While Arkadina loves her son, she does not respect or understand him, nor will she help him. Her possessiveness with Trigorin is evident. When she feels threatened, she throws aside decorum and dramatically attacks him, enticing, cajoling, physically pleading for him to stay with her.

He does. He knows where his bread is buttered.

Peter Wight plays Arkadina's brother, Sorin, ill, aging, and wryly accepting his disappointments. He is one of the play's more sympathetic characters.

Played luminously by newcomer Carey Mulligan, Nina is compelling in transforming from innocent enthusiasm to disillusion. By the end of the play, after a failed affair with Trigorin, Nina's youthful optimism has dissipated into the regret of reality. Poignantly she says to Konstantin: "Do you remember, you shot a sea gull? A man comes by chance, sees it, and out of nothing else to do, destroys it?"

Mackenzie Crook illuminates the resentment and yearning of the ill-fated Konstantin. Zoe Kazan plays Masha with constrained fury, energizing her with relentless bitterness. Kazan is so fervent in her portrayal that her anger unleashes perverse humor. You have to feel sorry for Pierce Quigley's well-meaning Medvedienko.

Tweaking these romantic entanglements are the artistic conflicts between the benefits of traditional art versus the risks of new forms.

Hildegard Bechtler's set is suitably harsh, with severe birch trees against a black backdrop outside the country house and a decaying interior with makeshift furnishings inside. The cold, spare feel is dramatized by Peter Mumford's lighting and Ian Dickinson's sounds of the Russian countryside.

A word of advice. Before taking your seat, stretch, take a deep breath and prepare yourself for almost three hours of watching this mix of characters unravel and interact before you. Your reward is satisfaction with having seen a finely detailed production of this classic. You will also have to endure the dissatisfaction of not having cared a twit about these people who do not care about each other. Like human nature, they will not change.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

October 3, 2008

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The First Breeze of Summer- September 2008

In The First Breeze of Summer, which opens the Signature Theatre Company's season-long salute to the Negro Ensemble Company, three generations of an African-American family ponder their lives and futures during one brutally hot June weekend in suburban Philadelphia. At Peter Norton Space, Ruben Santiago-Hudson directs an optimistic and emotional revival of the 1975 play by Leslie Lee with a cast headed by the notable Leslie Uggams as Lucretia. Called Gremmar, Lucretia is the ailing but intrepid matriarch whose story drives the exploration of the family saga through six decades of racism, sexuality, politics braced by the joys and comforts of religion.

Slowly secrets are stated and unraveled, lives and desires interwoven, and the past sets the scene for the present. Through memory segments, the social disruptions of the '70's are interspersed with Gremmar's history. Gremmar is visiting the family of her son, Milton, a construction company owner played by Keith Randolph Smith, and his wife, Hattie (Marva Hicks). Also in the house are two young adult sons, Nate and Lou, played by real life brothers, Brandon and Jason Dirden. Gremmar, who suffers from acute chest pains, shares in the family activities but also privately wanders into the past, sitting still in a chair, her eyes focus inward as she is transported to years gone by. Younger versions of Gremmar are played by Yaya DaCosta who is making her professional stage debut. With sensitivity, she portrays Lucretia at various points when love and lust bring her down. First Lucretia is young, vulnerable, and in love with Sam Green (Gilbert Owuor), who gives her a string of pearls and leaves her pregnant. She then works as a maid for Briton Woodward, a resentful, adopted white man played by Quincy Dunn-Baker. Again pregnant, this time she is the one who walks out. Later, John Earl Jelks plays Harper Edwards, a mine-worker/preacher who abandons her when he learns about her past.

Two of the three children, now grown, include Harper's son Milton, and Briton's daughter, the meddlesome chatterbox, Edna, played by Brenda Pressley. Sam's son has died.

Uggams portrayal of Gremmar is faceted with poise and intelligence. A relationship with God has softened the traumas of her life, and she has come to terms with her sensuous past and her disappointments. She learned to accept her unconventional emotions and experiences, and gained compassion without losing her spunk and wit, something appreciated by the whole family but especially by youngest grandson, Lou. Proud and wise, Gremmar is supportive of Lou's ambition to become a doctor although his father, Milton, wants him in the family business. Patiently, she counsels Lou, a bewildered and sexually ambiguous teenager, and in Act II, Gremmar, facing her mortality, takes a risk and allows Lou to learn her secrets, to which he reacts with surprising vehemence.

Lou's older brother, Nate, is frustrated and impatient working for his father. He is not as gifted or ambitious as Lou is, but he yearns for a fuller life and is critical of the way his father runs the business. He also derides their church ties. Nate is engaged to the vivacious Hope, played by Crystal Anne Dickinson. Like all the characters, Lou and Nate are carefully illustrated, fitting into a close-knit working African-American family with universal problems and centered around the church. One vigorous sequence has Reverend Mosely (Harvy Blanks) leading the family in raucous testifying session with full-throated "Glory Hallelujahs".

Reuben Santiago-Hudson savors each moment of the play, carefully fitting the puzzle pieces into the design. The story flows neatly between past and present. The set design by Michael Carnahan crams the stage with comfortable details of a middle-class home and porch with decorative plates on the wall, a piano topped with family photographs, and colorful plants. Marcus Doshi's lighting filters through the trees in the summer air. Karen Perry's costumes are faithful to the 1970's.

Finally, a summer breeze brings relief to the scorching weekend, just as Milton hires his first white employee, a symbol of changing times. In its original 1975 production, the play won an Obie Award and a Tony Award nomination for playwright Leslie Lee. Rich and detailed, The First Breeze of Summer under Reuben Santiago-Hudson's direction remains engrossing in its characters, language and vitality.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

August 28, 2008

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Refuge of Lies - September 2008

We've heard the story before and it is still relevant today when power rules and power corrupts. Refuge of Lies at the Lion Theatre, is a fictionalized account of a World War Two Nazi collaborator hunted down decades later to account for his crimes. Such a tale naturally brings up themes of guilt and forgiveness, vengeance and justice, which became just as applicable later with genocide in Albania, Cambodia, and today, in the Sudan.

The story is based on the case of Jacob Luitjens, and, as fictionalized accounts often state, the names were changed. The central character is named Rudi Vandrvaal, who fled from Holland as the war ended, changed his name to Werner Epp, and landed in Paraguay. There he joined a community and a church. He was reborn in a Mennonite baptism. He married the pastor's daughter, Netty and moved to Canada, changing his name back to Rudi Vanderwaal, believing that in the baptism he had died and been reborn and all his sins forgiven.

In Canada, Rudi worked as a teacher and again he and his wife enjoyed a tight community of friends. He joined a church and gained a friend in Pastor Jake. It is after he has retired that he finds out he is being pursued by Simon, a Jewish journalist from the Netherlands. Simon is convinced that Rudi was a Nazi collaborator in Holland and had helped round up Jews for the SS.

When Rudi realizes his situation, he loses all sense of equilibrium. He sees ghosts and specters, hears pounding on the door, and becomes paranoid. He still fails, nevertheless, to recognize his crimes insisting his sins were washed away in the river. Since the old days, he has been a different person, living a good, productive life, happy in Canada with his friends, family and church. His life in Canada has been productive, that much is true.

Both Rudi and Simon are tortured men. Netty agonizes over his past sins, which she had once refused to hear. She begs his friends and the pastor of their church to help him because Rudi is a good, gentle man. No one knows how to help. Rudi, going mad, spends nights on the roof with his pigeons.

Meanwhile Simon agonizes over his case, trying to get the Canadian government to expedite the transfer of Rudi back to Holland to face his crimes. His niece, Rachel, flutters back and forth, arguing with her uncle about Rudi's guilt versus his life today. The play never crystallizes its power and tension.

Rudi's turmoil is portrayed convincingly by Richard Mawe. and Lorraine Serabian stands out as his suffering wife, Netty. They try their best with this bulky script. Rudi is supposed to be a good person now, loving and caring, but we never see much of this. In the opening scene, four old friends are laughing and playing cards, but that, and often flashbacks to younger days, is the only other side of Rudi we see. Their friends Conrad and Hanni are compellingly steadfast as played by Arthur Pellman and Joanne Joseph. Drew Dix is the relentless, driven Simon and John Knass plays Pastor Jake. Libby Skalam in a whining voice, plays young Rachel without conviction.

Playwright Ron Reed, the managing artistic director of Vancouver’s Pacific Theatre, does not present his story cohesively; its inherent drama is lost in lumbering overdramatization. Director Steven Day cannot keep the story, or the characters, from meandering, often incoherently. Rebecca Ferguson's set design is spare and bleak with doors opening and closing for different characters and a curtained area (window or shower curtain, it is uncertain?) revealing shadowy activity. The costumes by Marina Reti are believable for the characters and the eras involved.

Unfortunately, the themes that are so universally compelling are not firmly nailed in place, despite two and a half hours of trying.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

September 17, 2008

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Flamingo Court - August 2008

Flamingo Court zeros in on the sunny side of older life, but most seniors admit the "golden years" are not all sunshine and orange blossoms even if you live in the Sunshine State. About 20 years ago, Luigi Creatore, now 87, came up with these insights about geriatric escapades in a Florida complex. His good-natured/poignant "Comedy in Three Condos" was presented at the Boca Raton Community Theatre and ended up just off-Broadway at New World Stages.

The three one-act plays star M*A*S*H's Jamie Farr and Chapter Two's Anita Gillette, crafting sharp characterizations of South Florida retirees. They are retired from jobs but not from life and they confront the good parts of living, like sex and love, but also the hard times. The first story, ''Angelina'' (Apartment 104), concerns Dominic, a silver fox who falls hard for Angelina, a fluttery, not quite conventional neighbor. Angie is drawn to the romantic Dominic, but is burdened with an invalid husband, Frank, whom we never meet. We never meet him because Frank is... well, that is one of the twists. Other twists involve a fantasy stroll down the Via Veneto in Rome and, fortunately or unfortunately, a murder. Or is it a murder? The plot meanders and shifts before an all-smiles ending.

Tackling the hard times is the heart of the middle play, ''Clara'' (Apartment 204). This moving segment is introduced by projected photographs of family memories before opening on an elderly couple slowly dancing. The wife, Clara, is suffering from dementia and Arthur, her husband, is waiting for transportation to take her to a nursing home. Clara does not want to go and solves the problem in a most traumatic manner. Jamie Farr communicates the husband's anguish over his dilemma, and Gillette shines as the fragile Clara, one moment as clear as her name and then confused and frustrated.

''Harry,'' in (Apartment 304), is a sprightly 89-year-old who passes time by scheduling himself for a free hearing test although his hearing is perfectly good. Farr as Harry showcases his outgoing comic flair, particularly with a quirky walk. He is lonely but vibrant and has a daughter, Chelsea, whom he despises. He has a unique habit to keep Chelsea from snooping around in his closet. Realizing that "living well is the best revenge," Harry resolves to spend his money and live lavishly, leaving his daughter nothing. He convinces the hearing-aid salesman to find him a hooker, and in comes Chi-Chi. Anita Gillette plays Chi-Chi with broad gusto in a frisky, platinum-blonde wig and squeezed into skintight gold tights and a plunging hot pink blouse. Harry would be happy about the play's ending where Chelsea, the self-centered daughter, gets her comeuppance.

The strong supporting cast includes Herbert Rubens, engaging as Mark, the hearing aid salesman, and Joe Vincent as Walter, who is in cahoots with wife Chelsea's plans.. Lucy Martin's biting voice rounds out portraits of Angelina's friend Marie and Harry's daughter Chelsea.

James Youmans designed a peach-hued Florida condo that easily accessorizes for each occupant. Carol Sherry's cheery costumes might have been chosen in a southern mall's Senior Shop, with baggy men's pants belted high above the waist, tropical shirts, and elastic socks, all brought to amusing tackiness in Harry's plaid shorts and Chi-Chi's blowsy get-up.

In these snapshots of life, director Steven Yuhasz squeezed the most comedy possible out of his actors' vocal and physical characterization. The pace is light-footed. Some of the biggest laughs went to the announcements projected above the stage between acts, comically relating tidbits about life in a retirement condo, scheduling Bingo, mall-hopping and daily lessons on using the cell phone and setting the DVD. Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, and Frank Sinatra singing '50's hits serves as a overture to Flamingo Court, and, a bouncing ball sing-along for a original tune, "Old Is In," brings in Act II.

Flamingo Court holds no message that smacks you in the head, except for the reminder to savor the laughs in life, and that's not a bad lesson at all.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

August 14, 2008

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Buffalo Gal - August 2008

Buffalo Gal -- Will she or won't she "come out tonight"? It all depends on Amanda. Will this fading Hollywood star accept a cushy TV sitcom playing Granny Sweetpants, or will she stick to her love of theatre and star as Madame Ranovskaya in a Buffalo production of The Cherry Orchard? Subtext issues range from life's disappointments to the future of regional theatre, from financial security to artistic ideals and reconnecting with yourself. A lot of issues for 90 minutes.

Buffalo Gal, a character-driven play written in 2002 by the prolific A. R. Gurney, opens the current season of Primary Stages and marks the play's New York debut. Reflective of the popularity of Gurney, the play was extended two weeks even before its opening night. The universality of his plays examines changing cultures and characters caught up in familial and societal dramas. As in this play, Gurney often uses his hometown of Buffalo to evoke past glory and present problems.

Buffalo Gal is a light comedy with amenable characters sketched with intrigue but not fully drawn. Jackie, director of Buffalo's small regional company, has convinced Amanda to return home and star in The Cherry Orchard. Amanda is an upper-class Buffalo blue blood who left family and home for an acting career. Alas, her glory has tarnished somewhat by now, but Jackie believes that if this production succeeds, the theatre company may survive financially, perhaps expand its reputation, and Amanda may regain her semi-glossy career. It is a win-win, if Amanda can pull it off.

Jackie, however, finds her star to be an insecure and needy diva-with-a-heart. Amanda worries about her career, admits her memory is not what it once was, and nostalgically remembers her privileged Buffalo upbringing in her grandmother's family home. With financial worries and a daughter with emotional problems, she is weighing the options of television versus stage. She becomes flustered by disruptions like finding out that her co-star in The Cherry Orchard has been replaced by James, an African-American recovering drug abuser. Her insecurity soars until she recognizes James as a friend from her early student days.

She is interested but apprehensive upon receiving a note from Dan, a former high-school boyfriend, now a local dentist with a new name. When they do meet, Dan makes a case for his deep and lasting love for Amanda, sending her a CD of a song he had written for her. We learn their early romance was more involved than first indicated. Furthermore, although Dan is married, he claims the marriage is not happy so perhaps Amanda can enjoy a lifestyle similar to what she once knew, as well work on stage again in Buffalo regional theatre.

Amanda senses coincidences between her life and that of the character she plays. Just as Mme. Ranovskaya tries to protect her family home, Amanda believes she may be able to regain her grandmother's home. With her stirred up emotions, she ignores the fact that both the upper-class Buffalo that formed Amanda, like the Russian aristocracy that formed Mme. Ranovskaya, is gone.

A final disruption comes when Amanda receives a call from her agent in Hollywood with a new sitcom offer. While it is merely television, not theatre, there could be lots of money in the sitcom -- if it works. Buffalo regional theatre is the stage, but promises little security. Amanda decides to go back to Hollywood just to make the pilot and then return immediately to Buffalo and The Cherry Orchard. Will she return or won't she?

Susan Sullivan, best known in television (Falcon Crest) and films (My Best Friend's Wedding), ably portrays the vulnerability beneath the theatricality of Amanda, who swoops across the stage, dipping into deep curtsies at every opportunity. Sullivan likes and respects her conflicted character but the role, as written, is sketchy.

Jennifer Regan plays Jackie, the ambitious director. Not only does she have her hands full keeping Amanda on track, she worries about the future of her small theatre and her own future. Furthermore, she wants to impress the children of her lesbian lover. Amanda and Jackie are the most full drawn characters.

James Waterston brings a hardworking eagerness to Roy, the stage manager. Carmen M. Herlihy as Debbie, the college intern with a passion for regional theatre, delivers the play's best lines with earnest perkiness. Dathan B. Williams portrays an overly mannered James. Mark Blum is fervent but not convincing in his claim of a love-that-never-faded for Amanda.

Andrew Jackness designed the backstage theatre set with props of birch trees and a hobbyhorse indicating use in The Cherry Orchard. Lighting is by Mary Louise Geiger, and costumes by Candice Donnelly. Director Mark Lamos provides an ambiance of humorous gentility with a bite, but try as it might, this Buffalo Gal does not yet "dance by the light of the moon."

Elizabeth Ahlfors

July 31, 2008

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2007 – 2008 SEASON

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The 39 Steps- January 2008

With wit, romance, and four high-powered actors, The Thirty Nine Steps transfers Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 film live to the Roundtable's American Airlines Theatre. The play is a

hand-in-glove connection to the film, breeziness overtaking the espionage thriller aspect, but who cares? If you did not see the film, you can still enjoy the play and its madcap

dexterity. Familiarity with classic 1930's spy flicks is helpful, but at the core, the current production is a non-stop action spoof, and it works with only a few sluggish spots.

In his adaptation of the film, Patrick Barlow inserted many of the familiar amusing lines. The characters bear resemblance to the film's Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll, Hitchcock's original blonde. Hannay (Charles Edwards) is a suave chap with a trim mustache, a pipe, an arched eyebrow, and one night he is in a quandary, thinking of something

utterly trivial and thoroughly mindless to do.

"Eureka!" he says. "I'll go to the theatre."

While he is at the music hall, shots ring out and Annabella Schmidt (Jennifer Ferrin), an exotic stranger from a Teutonic country, approaches him.

"Will you take me home with you?" she pleads. Always a gentleman, Hannay takes her to his West End flat where she tells that "the thirty-nine steps" is trying to smuggle military secrets out of England.

A moment to clarify. "The thirty-nine steps," an enemy spy ring, is the film's MacGuffin, Hitchcock's central gimmick that the story revolves around, intended only to keep the

action going.

It is not a good visit for the German beauty, who ends up with a knife in her back, whispering to Hannay, "Alt na Shellach!" Hannay is now entangled in an international crisis.

The police suspect he is the murderer, and they set off after him. Hannay heads for Scotland, trying to find "Alt na Shellach," capture the smugglers, and clear his name. He runs

into a series of near misses with suspicious, dangerous spies, and threatening police.

 There is a chase across the top of Scotland's Flying Scotsman, a near death stop in a Scottish farmhouse, an Edinbugh bridge, the highlands and a return to England. The story
is full of Hitchcockian references, obvious and obscure, including a silhouette montage of future Hitchcock films, The Birds, North by Northwest, Psycho, and Strangers 
on a Train, even the obligatory Hitchcock cameo. Mingled with the bedlam is always wit and romance.




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Most intriguing: The 40-plus characters are all depicted by four actors. Only Charles Edwards from the London production portrays just one character, Richard Hannay, 
always dapper in the same tweed, three-piece suit. Edwards lends him a Robert Donat-type self-confidence, balancing between apprehension and vanity. Jennifer Ferrin plays 
three women, each distinctive, the glamorous German, the dowdy farmer's wife, the not-at-all-naïve Hitchcock blonde. The dozens of other characters, police and enemy, grim 
Scots and churlish Cockneys, are portrayed by two energetic actors, Arnie Burton and Cliff Saunders, often with zany accessory changes. At one point, Burton plays two characters 
at one time, and Saunders is a winner as Mr. Memory, an entertainer who can answer anything. 

From London, director Maria Aitken, with Toby Sedgwick and Christopher Bayes' character choreography, keeps the action frenetic and inventive, using mime, stepladders,

window and door frames, costumes, shadows, smoke and lighting, for flashing switches of plot and movement. Peter McKintosh's 1930's fashions and his minimal, low-tech

sets are perfect, with Kevin Adams' lighting and Mic Pool's sound adding to the juiciness of the show. Everyone seems to be winking at the storyline and the only drawback is

an unwanted intermission in the hour and a half play.

The Thirty Nine Steps was Hitchcock's first film, a model for other films he was later to make. It concerns the Everyman driven against his will into a threatening, mysterious

situation. In a theatre season of psycho dramas and dysfunctional families, this Roundabout production is a restorative pause, a stylish, imaginative send-up done to perfection.

It is great fun as Depression-era Hitchcock presented on Millennium-era Broadway.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

Jamuary 18, 2008

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Come Back Little Sheba - January 2008

Before entering the Biltmore Theatre, try to erase all images of Shirley Booth from the film and original versions of William Inge's Come Back Little Sheba, now having its first Broadway revival. You can do it. You can also ignore the color-blind casting; interracial marriage was not the norm in mid-century America. It is really possible to let

S. Epatha Merkerson interpretation of Lola, touch you. Your heart will go out to the lonely, needy woman who is rejected by her own father and convinces herself to accept a

positive outlook with her alcoholic husband whom she calls "Daddy," while he calls her "Baby."

While Doc is compelling in his portrayal by a young-looking Kevin Anderson, Lola is the heart of the play. It is the story of a marriage eroded by frustration in a time when

societal demands were strict, and keeping to those rules was often damaging to the spirit. Come Back Little Sheba is a deceptively simple story with symbols around every corner. "Sheba" was a little dog whom we never see. She has been lost for years just like Lola's youthful dreams. Lola's early pregnancy, forced marriage, and miscarriage led to Doc to

giving up his dreams of medical school and becoming a chiropractor. Lola was trained for marriage and motherhood, and as she saw her youth fading, she felt she had nothing to

do with her life. Her looks and her home are in disarray, she has no social life, and her husband's love for her ebbed as he turned to alcohol. The only hope for them came when he joined Alcoholics Anonymous, and they tried to keep the marriage somewhat intact, although any emotion and intimacy was long gone.

Merkerson, the straight-talking capo-detective in Law and Order, portrays Lola with unique warmth and yearning. She subtly relays the loneliness of a woman who yearns for

things to be as they once were. Her only social connections seem to be with the daily links in her life, the postman, the milkman, and her neighbor, a meticulous housekeeper and

mother of seven who cannot understand how Lola can neglect her home so badly.

Living in their home is a flirty young boarder, Marie (Zoe Kazan), a college student who has a fiancé back home but is currently involved with another student, Turk. Brian J.

Smith's Turk is not physically hunky but adolescently lusty. Lola lives vicariously through Marie's vivaciousness, her pretty looks, and her boyfriends. Since her own sexuality is long gone and her husband has pulled away, Lola is drawn into the sensual relationship between Marie and Turk.

Kazan is a bubbly but savvy Marie, self-absorbed like many adolescents but grateful for Lola's kindness. Nevertheless, when Marie leaves town with her hometown beau (Chad Hoeppner), while she promises to visit, there is no indication that she will visit, write, or even remember her helpful landlady.

Unlike Lola, Doc is uneasy with Marie's relationship with Turk. Not only does Doc reflect the era's puritan values, but he is jealous of the sexual energy, and he complains that

Turk is taking advantage of Marie. Doc feels an increasing pull toward the liquor bottle in the kitchen. He is unsteadily balanced on the parallel bar of alcoholism which collapses

when he learns proof of Marie's promiscuity. This leads to a crushing climax with damaging words and unleashed repression.

Inge brings about a resolution that is honest and believable, and when Lola calls for Sheba for the last time, Lola knows it is the last time. Sheba is not coming home.

James Noone's compact set design shows the kitchen and living room of a small Midwest house, and Jennifer von Mayrhauser created clothes appropriate to the period.

Michael Pressman directs his cast with patience and natural unfolding. The secondary characters are distinct, believable and well rounded. The postman (Lyle Kanouse) brings a

laugh when he drinks several glasses of water one after another. The milkman (Matthew J. Williamson) is a wannabe muscleman and grateful for Lola's interest. Brenda Wehle

plays the disapproving neighbor.

William Inge, while not in the category of Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams in delving the depths of the spirit and character of the mid-20th century. Come Back Little

Sheba, like Inge's Picnic and Bus Stop, is a gritty revisit to a universal relationship of broken dreams in an atmosphere totally American.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

January 27, 2008

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August: Osage County - December 2007

Those family genes, they sure can cause trouble, and during one Oklahoma summer, the Weston family broils with invective and ends in disintegration. Gather a large family together and the chances are good that you have got yourself a drama, sometimes entertaining, comical, and sometimes brutal. Occasionally it is all three as with August: Osage County at Broadway's Imperial Theatre. Of course, getting in all that volatility takes time, and this production of familial ferocity, weaknesses and taboos takes up almost three and one-half hours over three acts. To watch is both painful and wickedly hilarious.

A premier ensemble from Chicago's acclaimed Steppenwolf Theatre Company presents this saga-supreme of family fury. Tracy Letts (Bug, Killer Joe) has written carefully carved 13 damaged characters passing down their mutilated genes, yet as tragic as the characters and their actions are, Letts unveils their humanity and truth.

The Weston clan comes together for the funeral of the patriarch, Beverly, played by the playwright's father, Dennis Letts, who is making his Broadway debut just as his son is making his Broadway writing debut. Beverly is alcoholic, a poet, and dying, and is psychologically estranged from his family, including his wife, Violet, who has mouth cancer and an addiction to pain killers.

Beverly appears in a lengthy opening scene seated at a table interviewing Johanna, a self-contained Native American young woman (Kimberly Guerrero), for the position of housekeeper. In an extended monologue, he rambles on about his work and his life, and ends by hiring the young woman and then walking out of the house. Everyone assumes he is dead and his family is left behind to cope, or not.

Todd Rosenthal's elaborate set shows three levels of a large, rambling, stifling house without air-conditioning in the hot Oklahoma summer. One of Violet's oddities is keeping light out of the house by taping all the windows with heavy paper. In the top level of the house, Johanna sits placidly in her attic bedroom, coming down to do her work and then returning upstairs, away from the ruthlessness downstairs.

The pill-popping mama, Violet, is played by Deanna Dunagan, taut and ferocious as an alley cat. From her first moments wobbling down the stairs, she presses the most hurtful buttons of everyone around her. Seated at the end of the dinner table, she passes around lacerating insults like unappetizing side dishes. She is most abusive toward her three daughters. The eldest is Barbara, played by Amy Morton, who exhibits her mother's fury mingled with her own guilt. Her marriage is faltering because husband Bill (Jeff Perry) cannot bear Barbara's damaging behavior and has fallen in love with a student. Their daughter, Jean, (Madeleine Martin), is a sultry, nubile, pot-smoking teen.

Middle daughter is Ivy, played by Sally Murphy, who has stayed near the family and has taken on the burden of her mother's care. Her revenge comes when an illicit relationship is revealed.

Karen Weston (Mariann Mayberry) is the youngest and lives in Florida, far removed from her family. She brings her fiancé, Steve Heidenbrecht (Brian Kerwin) to this emotional madhouse where his sleaziness fits in far too easily.

Violet's sister, Mattie Fae, a brazen loudmouth portrayed by Rondi Reed, is outstanding,. She arrives with her tolerant husband, Charlie, played by Francis Guinan, the only decent character. A hilarious scene has him trying to say grace at the same dinner table that Violet rules with such virulence; for obvious reasons, finding something to give thanks for is a problem. Their son, Little Charles (Ian Barford), a 20-something loser, has been incessantly berated by his mother. Little Charles later reveals his own survival plan.

Sheriff Deon Gilbeau is a supporting character with a significant link to Barbara and the mystery of Beverly's disappearance.

The third act unveils the play's surprises, and the devastating ending. Director Anna G. Shapiro keeps a sharp hold on a stunning story of memorably illuminated characters. The play begins leisurely but the point of view is never lost, nor is viewers' interest. Like Rosenthal's set, the costumes by Ana Kuzmanic are detailed for each character. Ann G.Wrightson and Richard Woodbury provide ambiance from day to night with lighting and sound designs, and David Singer's original blues adds musical authenticity.

Tracy Letts' gritty spook house invariably brings to mind Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee but August: Osage County stands on its own as a distinctive soap opera of genetic horror and humor.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

December 12, 2007

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The Seafarer - December 2007

Eat, drink and be merry, someone said, but he was not The Seafarer. Conor McPherson's dramatic black comedy at the Booth Theatre chooses one out of the three, and food with merriment are not included. Five of this year's most definitive theatre characters spend a dark, surprisingly funny Christmas Eve in a drab house in Baldoyle, north of Dublin, playing poker, bickering and boozing –plenty of boozing leading to more bickering, more boozing. Out of the endless talk, however, emerges empathy about the characters who battle their demons to as they face their humanity and life's travails.

An evening with The Seafarer would linger in the mind like a hangover were it were not for Irish dramatist/director McPherson's bursts of humor and his razor sharp colorful dialogue delivered by a magnetic and unbeatable male ensemble -- David Morse, Conleth Hill, Jim Norton, Sean Mahon, and Ciaran Hinds. Hinds plays a devil of a guy named Mr. Lockhart, a mysterious gent who first seems too urbane to mingle with the other four drunken losers. Why is he even here? All for good reason and all is revealed, but not here.

Excepting Mr. Lockhart, the characters are all chums from the same deteriorating village, men who never quite made anything of themselves and defend their existence with bluster and booze. Richard Harkin, both legally blind and blind-drunk, engrosses the audience with his unending blarney; this character is played by Jim Norton, who won the Olivier Award for this same role in London. Richard is in constant dizzying movement, verbosely and physically, and while he certainly is a sloppy drunk, Norton remains believable as, incredibly, he never loses site of the nearest whiskey bottle, nor does he ever spill any from his glass. His blindness happened a year ago when he fell into a dumpster, and called back his younger brother, James, "Sharky", to care for him, at the same time fiercely resenting Sharky's caretaking.

Sharky, and he is a card shark, is the play's main character, a suffering hunk of a man, a recovering alcoholic drifting near the edge of agony. He has no secure job, his wife has left him, he has no love, no hope, and he is solely responsible for his demanding brother Richard's needs, which are endlessly cajoling, irascible and malicious. David Morse, with restraint and subtlety, evinces sympathy for his character's lost situation as he tries to stay dry, to survive. He is the constrained center of this flailing bunch of inebriates.

To celebrate Christmas Eve, Richard calls in some friends for holiday drinking and poker. Conleth Hill plays Ivan Curry, who is already in the house, having passed out the night before. A good-natured drunk, he tends to stumbles around looking for his eyeglasses. He does not intend to sober up anytime soon, or leave the filthy house, avoiding his family who waits at home.

Sean Mahon portrays a sleazy Nicky Giblin who arrives bringing a stranger he met in a pub. Nicky is now involved with Sharky's ex-wife, and although Sharky does not welcome Nicky, the boozy Richard is a convivial host. The stranger, Mr. Lockhart, is eager for the poker game and now McPherson takes the play down a darker path. When the right moment arrives, Mr. Lockhart's true demonic intent emerges and it is not to win at poker at all, but to win a soul. He faces Sharkey alone to demand retribution for a debt past due. Sharkey remembers nothing about the debt nor why the poker game may cost him his immortality. At this point when the play's supernatural core is revealed, Mr. Lockhart describes a horrifying detailed description of hell.

Rae Smith designed a setting of a decrepit house -- bottles and glasses strewn about, furniture far beyond better days. In the corner is a scrawny Christmas tree and on the wall hangs a religious picture lighted by a votive candle that flickers ominously as Mr. Lockhart states his case. Smith's costumes suit the characters who dwell in or visit the house. The shadowy lighting by Neil Austin and sound design by Mathew Smethurst-Evans enliven the home fires of these dysfunctional brothers.

Despite a sluggish start, Conan McPherson (The Weir and Shining City) is a rich storyteller and provides another moody Irish mystical tale in The Seafarer. There is space for every member of this tight clan of actors to shine with his own raison d'etre. It was a hit show in London in 2006 and will premiere at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in April. While it is in New York, it is one of the season's highlights.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

December 2, 2007

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The Farnsworth Invention - December, 2007

Few can deny that the invention of what was once called the "boob tube" is responsible both in improving and dumbing down society. There is a story in this invention, and Aaron Sorkin, one of the genre's most successful writers, wrote it down and brought it to Broadway's Music Box Theater; The Farnsworth Invention is an entertaining story of television's birth and its two midwives.

The Farnsworth Invention, a dive into physics, math and technology, turns out to be surprisingly engaging, thanks to Sorkin's swift-moving dialogue, as well as director Des McAnuff, who swipes a clean crisscrossing of two men battling for credit for this new invention. He keeps their dual stories quick-paced, seen through each others' eyes and then debated, a technique which is effective although somewhat superficial. One of the men is the genius behind the inventor, Philo T. Farnsworth (Jimmi Simpson), a "ridiculous hayseed savant," according to his competitor, David Sarnoff. Farnsworth was a Midwestern Mormon who while still in high school was so naturally gifted in science that he was convinced that his adolescent plan to transmit moving pictures across space would work. Simpson is credible as Farnsworth, moving and standing awkwardly, wearing the ill-fitting clothes of a man who does not involve himself with such trivia as tailored suits and swank accessories.

Sarnoff escaped from the Russian schtetl, arrived in New York, and worked his way smoothly up to head RCA and NBC, with underlings who toiled to create television around the time Farnsworth was experimenting in his farm home. Sarnoff is played with tense, high-minded self-assurance by Hank Azaria. As he points out, "The ends do justify the means. That's what means are for." Sarnoff is confident and his stance is commanding. His suits fit beautifully. In this story, when he faces Farnsworth over the patent for television, you weigh the options – RCA versus Farnsworth? According to Sorkin, it is RCA. Factually, Farnsworth won the patent case. Here dies a drunk, and Sarnoff with RCA lives on synonymously with the medium of television.

Right and wrong regarding facts is one controversial issue with The Farnsworth Invention, but drama, nevertheless, exists. Sorkin's dialogue is crisp and breezy. The controlled, charming Machiavellian Azaria versus plain-talking Simpson, rule the stage in front of a large cast of intermingled supporting characters who stride across the stage. They are the only two actors without duplicate roles. The expansion of cast members in a play focused on one issue is somewhat distracting, but McAnuff keeps the point in sight.

The plot, however, is not one of bad versus good. While there is a power struggle with big money lawyers versus small-town genius, Sarnoff is corporate minded, but with values. His television ideals were not to be instituted by commercialism but by quality. The journey to the patent trophy is stimulating, with the history of the medium a fascinating side post.

The duplex staging is sleekly designed by Klara Zieglerova, and David C. Woolard created believable 1930's era costumes.

Sorkin started in theatre with A Few Good Men in 1989 and then moved west to Hollywood and television. In the past few years, Aaron Sorkin enjoyed a long run with the very popular, The West Wing, and the less acclaimed, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which did, at least, last a season, an accomplishment these days. Hollywood provided him with historical grist for this return to Broadway. While the facts in The Farnsworth Invention are debatable, the end product is a fascinating look back some 70 years through different eyes, as this huge part of our lives, television, was taking the baby steps that would eventually lead to the first small steps on the moon.

check for facts: www.thefarnsworthinvention.com

Elizabeth Ahlfors

December 1, 2007

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A Bronx Tale - November 2007

"You could ask anybody from my neighborhood and they'll tell you, this is just another Bronx tale."

At the end, that's what it is. For Chazz Palminteri, however, it is more, because this is his Bronx tale, his childhood and his influences. When anyone looks back at his own life,

everything is unique and special, but most of us have all seen this Bronx tale before. The characters are stereotypes – the trusting boy torn between the hard-working, salt-of-the-earth father who urges integrity and love, versus the charismatic neighborhood capo, Sonny, who speaks with authority and invokes fear. What do you finally choose -- integrity or intimidation?

It is 1960, and nine-year-old Calogero Palminteri, watches the world pass from his stoop on the corner of 187th Street and Belmont Avenue. He listens to the local doo-wop groups practicing their 50's harmonies on the corner with "white" dance steps. Upstairs his mother is making sauce. Down the block is the local hangout, Chez Joey and up the block is

the hardware store and some betting joints. Calogero worships the Yankees and Mickey Mantle is his idol. If you grew up in the boroughs, you know the story.

Until the world changes. Directly in front of him, Calogero sees a murder take place. Two cars are vying for a space and one driver gets out and smashes the other with a baseball bat. Suddenly, the imposing Sonny, from whom everyone backs off, appears with a gun and shoots the assailant. He looks around, sees Calogero on the stoop, and disappears.

No one has to tell the boy what to do when he is taken by his father to identify the shooter in a police lineup. When Calogero comes face-to-face with Sonny, he does not identify him as the killer. From this point on, Sonny takes the boy under his wing, bringing him into Chez Joey, introducing him around as "my boy", and calling him "C".

Directed by Jerry Zaks, Chazz Palminteri brings his conversational one-man show to the Walter Kerr Theatre. He connects naturally with the audience. He had produced The Bronx Tale in 1989 off-Broadway, and in a 1993 film, he appeared as Sonny. It is a compelling, heartfelt snapshot of a certain time, a certain place, a certain social milieu with its special jabs of humor and disdain.

Palminteri is casually dressed and effectively portrays an array of colorful people with subtle body language and graceful hand gestures, neighborhood characters like Eddie Mush, Frankie Coffee Cake, and JoJo the Whale. Number-one, looming over everyone, is Sonny, who knows everything that is going on in his district and can change lives in a flash. He is a handy guy to have on your side, and Chazz knows it and admires him.

Calogero became "Chazz" to everyone but his parents. He always kept a strong bond with his father, Lorenzo, an honest bus driver who disdained Sonny. Between the two older men, Chazz was influenced by a duo of father figures. Lorenzo wanted the boy to be neat, clean and educated; Sonny was the dean of "the University of Belmont Avenue." The conflict between the two forces never lags during the 90-minute play.

James Noone designed a simple set with a center tenement and stoop, a street sign signifying a corner, and the neon invitation to Chez Joey. Chazz Palminteri needs nothing

more to set the scene and share his memories.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

October 27, 2007

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Pygmalion - October 2007

It is hard to keep the memory of the "loverly" My Fair Lady score from insinuating itself throughout the Roundabout Theatre Company's production of Pygmalion.. Written in 1912 by George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, at the American Airlines Theatre, with its lightning fast dialogue is an expressive, entertaining portraiture of British classes and sexism in Edwardian times.

Most surprising in this production may be the casting of the leads. Film and TV actress Clare Danes, with very few false turns, makes a comfortable entrée onto the Broadway stage as Eliza Doolittle, the "squashed cabbage leaf" who becomes a lady. Jefferson Mays (I Am My Own Wife and Journey's End) takes on yet another characterization for his theatrical resume. He turns Henry Higgins, familiar as the Leslie Howard/Rex Harrison debonair, arrogant upper-class phoneticist, into a self-involved, spoiled, genius brat, the bane of his down-to-earth mother. His command of the Shavian dialogue is strong and precise. Both Dane and Mays are thoroughly believable in challenging roles.

As the story goes, Higgins, "a confirmed bachelor with a mother fixation," overhears the "deliciously low" street accent of a Cockney flower vendor at Convent Garden. He comments to a colleague, Colonel Pickering (Boyd Gaines), that he can improve her speech and deportment in six months, making her ladylike enough to get a job as a shop girl. Claire Danes' Eliza is suspicious, but has sufficient self-confidence to bring her to Higgins' Wimpole Street doorstep and take him up on his bluster. With the hope of getting herself to a higher position, she is spunky enough to give it a try.

As the snappy guttersnipe, Eliza Doolittle, Danes stirs vulnerability into her Cockney street smarts, making her a strong antagonist for Higgins. Higgins is completely impatient at those less competent than he is and does not fail to show it. He has the irascible conduct and body movements of a bad boy. He is outrageously disdainful of Eliza, but wants to use her to prove a phonetics lesson, never considering how she will fare once his lessons are over. Dane's whiny voice at the start of the play would be a challenge to anyone. Danes is not the most expressive crier on stage, but later, when she has to debut as a "lady," her determination has enough stiffness to indicate that this is an unnatural demeanor for her and she makes it a sequence of wit and eloquence. When we see her after the ball, a crest-fallen Danes convinces us that Eliza succeeded in the task, but she also learned that her own confidence has real worth. Successfully cleaned-up allows Eliza's natural essence to shine through, and the play ends with poignancy, if not romance.

David Grindley directed the production with vision and strong supporting cast choices. Boyd Gaines holds his own as a more open-minded Colonel Pickering, supporting Higgins' outrageousness but with definite pangs of discomfiture. Helen Carey plays Higgins' mother with the poise expected of her class but obviously exasperated by her son's behavior. Her tea guests, the Eynsford-Hills, mother and daughter (Sandra Shipley and Kerry Bishe), hiding the fact that they have actually lost their money, retain the necessary façade of proper etiquette. The son, Freddy (Kieran Campion), is engagingly dim and lovestruck.

Jay O. Sanders grabs the stage playing Eliza's father, Alfred Doolittle, once satisfied by his lower-class freedom yet is convincing in his leap to middle-class respectability. Brenda Wehle is adept as Higgins' igginHcrustyhousekeeper, Mrs. Pearce.

Jonathan Fensom designed appropriate sets and costumes with wonderfully cramped eccentricity. Claire Danes went from shabby dress and hat to suitable tea suit and delectable ball gown, a smooth blooming to suit her independence at the end. She proves, "The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated."

Still remembering Lerner and Loewe's music -- "You did it! You did it! You said that you would do it/ And indeed you did." The Roundabout Theatre Company's Pygmalion succeeds as a articulately sparkling battle of the classes.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

October 20, 2007

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The Ritz - October, 2007

"Come with me and we'll attend

Their jubilee and see them spend

Their last two bits,

Puttin' on the Ritz"

The Irving Berlin tune is not part of the Roundabout Theatre's farce, The Ritz. The Ritz, by Terrance McNally, takes place in the 1970's, and it is hard to get past the realization that looming ahead are the '80's, and the epidemic of AIDS that swept through the much of the theatre community. The Ritz at Studio 54 is a bright elaborate escapade that once had its day.

The dying patriarch of an Italian family puts a hit on his daughter's husband, Gaetano Proclo. Proclo flees his Cleveland home and goes into hiding in a New York City gay bathhouse called The Ritz. Who would suspect he is hiding there? So begins the door-slamming hilarity of miscommunication, mismatching and mixed identities.

Kevin Chamberlin plays Proclo, disguised with a mustache and an oversized black wig on his bald head. He is a lovable, terrified gentle giant in a bizarre environment; it does not take long for him to realize that he is not in Cleveland anymore. A "chubby chaser," Claude, played with intense determination by Patrick Kerr, pursues him. The flamboyant – and flaming – Chris, wrapped in a kimono, befriends him. Hunky, towel-clad young men scamper around Scott Pask's set of sky-high three glam levels of red doors, dashing from room to room, the steam room there, an orgy here, the Crisco there.

Furthermore, the hit man, Carmine Vespucci (Lenny Venito), found out where Proclo is hiding and sent a detective out to find him. Terrence Riordan plays Michael Brick, the beanpole detective with a soprano voice.

In Act II, Carmine himself shows up looking for the detective and Proclo, provoking even more searches, near escapes, and diving under beds. In addition, Proclo's wife and Carmine's sister (Ashlie Atkinson) appears, hysterically torn between her father's last wish and her husband. A final frenzy implodes when her mink coat is stolen.

Joe Mantello directs the action like an orchestra conductor, mostly con brio, but occasionally troppo pesante, with some of the slapstick sequences merely sluggish. Despite numerous comic moments and some that feel forced, the large cast turns in sparkling performances, like Brooks Ashmanskas, who finds the heart of the swishy Chris and fleshes out the stereotype.

Notable is Rosie Perez as untalented but confident Googie Gomez, shimmering in William Ivey Long's shiny spandex pants suit and a generous selection of tight-fitting dresses. McNally wrote a part that earned Rita Moreno a supporting Tony Award in 1975 and now gives Perez a chance to do her stuff in the same role. Googie has two nightclub sequences, and her first one is hilariously horrible. A hint of disaster comes when the neon light spelling, "The Ritz" loses part of its "R", and reads, "The Pitz." It is the pits, but Googie gives show biz her all with spice and vigor and as much shtick as she can manage, singing off-tune, slipping her wigs, losing her platform shoes, and performing Christopher Gattelli's hackneyed dance steps with two cleaning boys/dancers, Tiger and Duff (Lucas Near-Verbrugghe and David Turner). Her song selection mangles Broadway with "originals", like Manana (Annie), Peoples (Funny Girl), and the Sabbath Prayer from Fiddler on the Roof.

Perez plays the comic role to the hilt. Unfortunately, like Charo on speed, she has a fiery Spanish accent. Words whiz by, often indecipherably, and you really do not want to miss one word of Googie's garble.

Is The Ritz super duper? Not really. Once it was a plea for fun and tolerance during a particular decade, The Ritz now channels an ironic remembrance of what came next.

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Elizabeth Ahlfors

October 12, 2007

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Mautitius - October, 2007

Who would suspect that a play about a stamp collection could be as intriguing as a contemporary film noir? How often do you find yourself hooked by the question, "Who has the album now?", watching as a tiny papers in a red book, possibly very valuable, are clutched by one sister, set on a table, grabbed by another sister, a philatelist, a con man, dropped on the floor and threatened with a match. Manhattan Theatre Club's Mauritius by Theresa Rebeck, at the Biltmore Theatre may have imperfections, but in the end it does prove that stamp collecting can provide good theatre as long as it contains some key elements. One is a sterling ensemble cast, telling the story with conviction and persuasion. Another is director Doug Hughes, who controls the strings of tension like a puppet maestro.

The stamp collection belongs to either of two sisters. The younger, Jackie, played by Alison Pill, inherited the album from her late mother who wanted to thank her daughter for care during her illness. As the play begins, Jackie brings the album for evaluation by a philatelist, Philip. She may be young but she suspects there may be some value here and she deserves some reward for her life, which has been difficult.

Philip, played by Dylan Baker, cannot be less interested. He does not even bother to look up from his book as she pleads her case, but another stamp lover, the charismatic Dennis (Bobby Cannavale), has been listening and agrees to look at the collection. He is not an expert, but he is interested in stamps and even more interested in the art of the con. He spots two rare stamps from Mauritius that could be worth millions. He contacts a crude, avaricious collector named Sterling, played by F. Murray Abraham, to discuss the stamps. Sterling is skeptical but willing to be convinced. If Sterling agrees that the stamps are authentic, he will pay for them in cash.

Dennis follows Jackie home, and finds that her estranged older half-sister, Mary (Katie Finneran), is back, insisting that she owns the album since it had belonged to her grandfather, and not Jackie's mother. Dennis tries to ingratiate himself to both women, but Jackie finally gets possession of the album. By this time Jackie has toughened her stance, having googled the stamps and learned they might make her rich. She agrees to meet Dennis and Sterling at Philip's store.

Now come the twists and turns leading to ownership of the stamps. The bargaining between Sterling and Jackie is gripping. Questions arise, but enjoying the action of the show means swallowing some skepticism. There are jumps from A to Z. How does Jackie always gain possession of the album when both sisters are determined to own it? Why would Jackie bring the valuable stamp collection to a deserted store late at night to meet some unsavory character she does not know? Why doesn't Sterling, who is not portrayed with much in the way of ethics, kill her and grab the stamps, instead of giving her a suitcase of money? Why did Philip, who runs a business of evaluating stamps, not make the slightest effort to glance at the collection? There is a hint of more than friendship between Dennis and Jackie, but when did that happen?

As for Mary, what caused the family estrangement? Why is she obviously better off financially than Jackie and why is she so totally self-involved? Behind the desperation driving these characters, there are not enough answers.

The actors, however, portray their characters convincingly. Bobby Cannavale is ingratiating in his Broadway debut as a charming con man, ready to move to whichever side looks more lucrative. Allison Pill portrays a raw mix of bitterness, fragility and steeliness, wanting nothing much more than enough to lay back on a beach with a Marguerita. She breaks your heart telling her sister, "I just wanted something, for once, just something.” Finneran is an equally convincing Mary, with contained selfish determinism; one is almost ready to see a smidgen of humanity in her. F. Murray Abraham is menacing yet crafty, weaving his deal with Allison with oily determination. Dylan Baker seems almost flat at the beginning but gains personal shadows as the story evolves. The spurts of humor that arise from these actors keep the momentum.
The staging is perfect: John Lee Beatty's set moves effortlessly from one dusty, dreary space to another, and Paul Gallo lights up the mood exquisitely.

Theresa Rebeck, in her first Broadway play, may have skimped on character depth but she knows the drama of greed and revenge, and how to manipulate with sharp tension.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

October 7, 2007

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Dividing The Estate - October 2007

Directed by Michael Wilson at Primary Stages, 59E59, Horton Foote's Dividing the Estate sets greed against family loyalty during a period of financial difficuties. The setting is the gulf coast of Texas in 1987, where a family dispute over their home and land, unfolds over the course of several days. All the members of the Gordon family have needs and expectations; each is demanding and each possesses layered qualities with definitive edges. The talented Mr. Foote, however, paints even the most self-involved as defensible to some extent.

The value of the estate is reduced to the house and the land surrounding it. With taxes looming, and oil rigs and fast food locations encroaching, the Gordon family wealth is an ebb tide. The matriarch is 85-year-old, Stella, convincingly played with a fierce growl by Elizabeth Ashley, who is nowhere near that age, despite her gray wig and feeble movements. She insists she will never divide the estate, as her children urge. Stella argues that her father kept the land and house together during worse times than this, and she will do no less.

Still imperious, Stella is waited upon by her eldest daughter, Lucille, played with sweet-tempered patience by Penny Fuller. Lucille's son, called Son, (Devon Abner) takes care of the estate management, earnestly trying to hold everything together. Also living in the house is Brother, Lewis (Gerald McRaney), who has a drinking problem and is drawn toward young girls. Brother resents Son's authority over the finances, and constantly demands advances on his inheritance, most recently to pay up for dallying with a high school girl.

The youngest daughter, Mary Jo, lives in Houston with two ditzy, self-involved grown daughters and a husband (James DeMarse), who has placed his family in financial jeopardy. Mary Jo is exquisitely played with irritating nasal spunk by Hallie Foote, the playwright’s daughter. She and her family are visiting for dinner but, most important, Mary Jo is coming to demand her part of the estate -- now.

By the end of the play, after some hope and several twists, no one is satisfied. There are no assets of their estate to share, only debits to deal with. The desperate Mary Jo, facing the hopelessness of deliverance from bankruptcy, snaps, “I know what I’m praying for, every night down on my knees. That we strike oil.” We all know the chances of that, and have to appreciate the despair of this selfish woman.

Horton Fiske, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright for The Young Man from Atlanta and Academy Award winner for the screenplay for Tender Mercies, has written a family history that flows as leisurely as a summer afternoon with characters as crisp as fresh lemonade. He points out that like people, the past, however one might remember it, always dies, letting the present step forward with its changes and challenges. The past/present gap is benignly symbolized here by Son's fiancée, Pauline, played by Maggie Lacey, an open-minded, generous schoolteacher in effective contrast to most of the family, and surprisingly, by Brother's very young fiancée.

Three servants play out their own past versus present. Arthur French stands out in this stellar cast, portraying one of the most engaging members of the household, Douglas, an elderly African-American retainer with trembling hands. He remembers his once important place in the family and insists on having his own way, even when it means taking a nap in the living room and serving the family dinner when he cannot hold a plate steady. e HeHe

He is as determined to do the chores he has always done just as he demands a certain hymn be played when the time comes to be lowered into the ground next to his mother's grave. Stella, respecting the historic role Douglas played in the family all through her life, placates him.

The humor throughout the play rises naturally from the honesty of the characterizations and respect of the past. If the story moves a bit too leisurely at times, the sharp characters are smartly acted out in yet another clear Horton Fiske view of Americana, past and present.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

October 6, 2007

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Opus - August 2007

What happens when a talented group dedicated to the ephemeral art of music begins to break apart? Can it ever be repaired? Can one element of the whole dynamic be exchanged for another? What if that dynamic is a world-renowned string quartet, and one vital member disappears? What happens to the other three members when the new addition is astonishingly gifted?

Such a problem is one of life's precipitous changes, self-contained, amorphic, challenging, and tackled is by Michael Hollinger in Opus, as the first offering in Primary Season's new season at 59E59. With staging by Jim Kronzer and Justin Townsend's evocative lighting, Opus is a spare production of short scenes with four chairs and five actors. Director Terrence J. Nolen keeps a purposeful pace with flashbacks and interviews, building moment to moment to an intense climax that destroys one of the characters and most likely the dynamic essence of the quartet.

The Lazara String Quartet is composed of four musicians who have been a together for years, who have worked hard to reach a level of respect in the music world. Elliot, the lead violinist is played by David Beach, is pretentious, arrogant and theatrical, in a relationship with the brilliant but irresponsible and chemically dependent Dorian (Michael Laurence). Richard Topal plays Alan, the second violinist, a womanizing loner, whose family has left him. Cellist Carl, is played by Douglas Reese, a down-to-earth family man who has been battling cancer and the group's temperament with laid-back wit.

Suddenly Dorian, their star violinist, takes off. Since the group has an upcoming White House concert, the remaining three cannot spend time looking for him. They fire him and begin auditioning for a replacement. Elliot, as self-proclaimed leader of the group, precipitously decides, not only to add the newcomer, but to change the quartet's White House selection, substituting a new piece, Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14 Opus 131, which is vastly more challenging. They audition a brilliant, wide-eyed, intensely ambitious young woman, Grace (Mahira Kakkar), who is determined to make the right decisions for her secure future in music, flip flopping between the string quartet and an offer by a symphony orchestra. She agrees to join the smaller group, which means wriggling her way into their established pattern as if she were a second wife stepping into a broken marriage.

Like a marriage, the individual pieces putting together a musical presentation are emotional, with its realism based on the fact that the playwright, Hollinger, is a classically trained violist as well as a gifted storywriter. With four personalities in a rehearsal room, the result is dramatic -- clashes, blending, endless reworking, communicating, all focused on their goal of tackling the difficult opus, considered experimental and radical. They achieve their goal and then Dorian returns. In the final scene, there are five personalities in a final explosion of melodramatic destruction.

Their stories and relationship emerge through flashbacks via different characters, each defined as personalities, each portraying as distinct an element as the instruments they play. Music coaches like Kate Berthold, have made them look as close to professional musicians as possible. Watching the four actors, while they are not physically playing their instruments, they are emotionally "playing" their instruments, feeling the music, knowing what their part is and how it varies from the others.

Jorge Cousineau provides the sounds from taped music.

What nags, however, with anyone dedicated to playing an instrument, is the deliberate destruction of one of the instruments. A dramatic move, yes, but not a believable action by a musician.

Opus premiered in Philadelphia at the Arden Theatre Company and won two 2006 Barrymore Awards for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Direction of a Play.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

August 4, 2007

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Surface to Air - July 2007

"Play the voices again," urges the mother at the start of this new play by David Epstein. It comforts her to hear the voices.

Surface to Air is a snapshot of one family and how each member has coped with the death of a beloved son.

The play is set after 9/11 but before the invasion of Iraq. Directed by James Naughton at Symphony Space's Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, Surface to Air displays an unavoidable resemblance to the Iraq war today and the probability of the same scenario for future families. While there are occasional lapses in the 80-minute production, the tension is palpable, especially in the last half of the story. The strongest problem is the occasional focus on overdone dialogue while its power lies in the intertwining emotions.

The cast is led by the amazing Lois Smith and outstanding Larry Bryggman as the parents, Princess and Hank. Their son, Rob was killed in 1971 in a bomber crash in North Vietnam. Recently Rob's remains were recovered and now the family is gathering to await the military escort bringing home the ashes. The parents live in a working class house in Long Island that has not changed in 30 years. The ghostly figure of Rob (Mark J. Sullivan) occasionally appears at the side to comment on the details of his death. The parents are inside, waiting for their other son and daughter to arrive. Princess has never recovered from her son's death. She is ailing physically and mentally. She does not care about the politics or the controversy of the Vietnam War; she continues living in the past on the emotional plane of suffering. Hank, now frail himself, is a veteran of World War II, an old-time bigot who clings to the belief that the Vietnam War was necessary to fight a threat, defend our nation and spread democracy.

Their surviving son, Eddie, a recovering alcoholic played by James Colby with barely restrained bitterness, arrives with his latest wife, Magdalena (Marisa Echeverria). She is Hispanic, outspoken and ambitious, ready to support her new family in this compelling moment of their lives, but looking forward to pursuing her own goal with Eddie, opening a bagel shop with Latin food. Her intersperses occasionally tug against the tension of the play's focus, but it works to illuminate Hank's bigoted views, as does the presence of daughter, Terry's husband, Andrew (Bruce Altman), whom she defines as a "Jewish documentarian."

When Terry (Cady Huffman), flies in from California, the household is enlivened with her hyper-Hollywood executive vivacity. She has escaped the family tragedy by running West, and how returns home for just a brief stop for the recovery of her brother's ashes. Husband Andrew comments that he regrets never going to Vietnam because he might then have made something significant of his life. This spurs Eddie's furious explosion at the ridiculousness of that war, and the unnecessary death of his brother. "There was no glory there, it was disgrace."

Outraged at his son's comments, Hank points out that Eddie was a hero himself, at which point, Eddie admits that he threw away his medals.

Back to the voices -- which feature Hank and his sons singing Alexander's Ragtime Band in happier days. Terry admits always feeling like an outsider because she was never asked to sing. With all the emotional baggage being spilled, Princess is upset but focusing on the lost Rob. Her acceptance of his ashes from the escort is a moment of heartbreaking despair. She takes the ashes with her upstairs and later returns for a harrowing ending. All Hank can do for her is play the voices from a peaceful past.

David Epstein has the sensitivity and the talent for conveying the emotions of this suffering family. Some may criticize him as Arthur Miller-lite, but others will credit him for Arthur Miller-promise. Both have validity. Does life go on or does life stop? Survivors deal with loss as best they can, which may be as senseless and tragic as the ground coming up to meet the falling pilot, and just as unavoidable.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

July 22, 2007

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Old Acquaintance - June, 2007

Family dynamics are a gold mine for the theatre. Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, and Arthur Miller knew that well, as did Kaufman and Hart.

Besides families, close friendships also do pretty well providing grist for drama and amusement, especially if they are two pals who grow up together in a small town and claw their way to the top, so to speak, by the time they reach middle age. Maybe the two close friends, Kit Markham and Millie Drake, in Old Acquaintance, currently revived at the American Airlines, did not claw, but they fit the scenario of long-time chums whose history together clothes them with affection and loyalty as well bitter envy and competition. They have their baggage, in this case, professionally and romantically. In the 1930's, these elements often resulted in drawing room comedies like The Man Who Came to Dinner and The Philadelphia Story

Written in 1940, John van Druten's Old Acquaintance is redolent of that pre-WWII era. The Roundabout Theatre Company obviously spared no expense in the elaborate settings and costumes but this revival never takes off. It stars two actors, Margaret Colin and Harriet Harris, who usually promise on-target interpretations, but here their performances are several rings away from the bull's eye despite momentary sparks of conflict and performance.

Colin plays intelligent and sophisticated Katherine (Kit) Markham, a novelist who has become a literary sweetheart with critical raves and little financial rewards. Kit has never married and savors her independence even with its loneliness; she entertains the idea of marrying her younger lover, played by Corey Stoll. Her lifelong best pal, Mildred Watson Drake, is also a novelist, but one who grinds out potboiler beach-reads and rakes in the royalties. Millie is a Barbara Cartland confection, a reluctant divorcee and the mother of an exuberant 19-year-old, Deidre (Diane Davis). Deidre, to Millie's horror, idolizes Kit while dismissing her mother. No one is really happy until the end, when a sudden, unexpected and unexplainable pairing solves everyone's problems, if not to their satisfaction.

If no one is really happy, no one is quite sympathetic either. Colin looks and acts the part of the bright urbanite, but she holds back the wit and bite to attract enough interest in her character. As Millie, Harris seems to have studied the Spring Byington catalogue of fluffy dames, working for the slapstick rather than the caustic although she has moments of blatant nastiness that are the delicious high points of the play. Diane Davis portrays the young daughter with adolescent self-absorption but not much else. As Kit's young beau, Rudd Kendall, Corey Stoll does not render much charm or substance. Kit and Rudd do not display the pizzazz of a popular Manhattan couple. The most sympathetic characters are the brief appearances of Millie's ex-husband, Preston, played by Stephen Bogardus, and the wise-cracking maids, Gordana Rashovich and Cynthia Darlow.

Michael Wilson paces the story leisurely with three acts and does not spur the actors to show more spirit. The sets by Alexander Dodge say the most about the characterizations: Kit living in a book-laden, paneled, artsy flat on Washington Square and Millie subletting a Park Avenue duplex glittering like a gold trimmed Versailles wannabe. David Woolard's costumes are dead-on, Kit tailored, Millie in a fashion parade of furs, capes and gowns. Swirly skirts and puffed sleeves illustrate Deidre's girlishness.

Old Acquaintance was first and last performed on Broadway in 1940, though is better remembered as the 1943 film adaptation with Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins, and as a 1981 remake, Rich and Famous, starring Candice Bergen and Jacqueline Bisset. While amusing, this current effort falls short of the witty conversational genre and the blame must go to the leading stars who merely flicker rather than shine.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

June 30, 2007

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2006 – 2007 SEASON

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The Year of Magical Thinking - April 10, 2007

It's always worth more than the price of a ticket to see Vanessa Redgrave on stage. When she is appearing in a one-woman play, it nudges up to a must-see. However, The Year of Magical Thinking at Broadway's Booth Theatre loses most of its magical grip with author Joan Didion's stage version of her best-selling memoir. While Redgrave can read a telephone book compellingly, this book is better suited for paper than theatre.

It is a story filtered through the mind and emotions of one of the most talented writers today, an intelligent, literate, analytical woman searching for the truth. A gripping, informative memoir on paper, however, does not always translate smoothly onto the stage. One reason may be that The Year of Magical Thinking is a journey through a woman's mind and memories. It has all the elements of heart and drama: love, death, sudden loss of a husband and child, but the search is cerebral, searches within a limited sphere from her own point of view, with little variation, broken up by her compulsion for control through research. Toward the end, even with its brilliant moments, it unfortunately leads to tedium

Over an hour and a half, Redgrave tells us we will all experience what she, as Didion, has gone through. She sits on a wooden chair and talks about her marriage, her family, about coming to terms with her loss, why she feels as she does, why she remembers what she does. The sudden death of Didion's husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, in December 2003, led Didion into her "magical year," driven to remain in control by gathering as much information as she could. She had to deal with absence, and its aftermath, including what Didion calls a "vortex." This is an unexpected suctioning into a whirlpool of memories, emotions and pain. Didion could not let go of the fact of the finality of her husband's death. She explains the "If" thinking -- if you do this, the person will return. Didion, for example, kept his shoes, illogically determining that if she did this, he would come back.

While she tried to make sense of the event, her life was further complicated by the long illness of her only daughter, Quintana Roo. Shortly after the publication of The Year of Magical Thinking, Quintana also died. Her death was not included in the book, but the author includes it in the play. If we've already experienced grief through the loss of a loved one, we can identify with many of Didion's observations and emotions, and know that no one has the right to judge how each reacts to this intensely private situation. Didion is a contained, thoughtful person; some of the hospital workers saw her as "a cool customer." Inside, she was far from "cool."

The play's staging is as Spartan as the memoirs, with curtains designed by Bob Crowley, dropping periodically behind Redgrave's chair to indicate new scenes. Director David Hare retains the restraint of being inside the mind, keeping Redgrave in her chair until the monologue reaches its end.

"Life changes in the instant," Didion wrote in her book. "(The event) seems like a while ago but it won't when it happens to you… and it will happen to you," Life as you know it can change on a dime.

Over the years, people find ways to cope, or they don't. With Vanessa Redgrave's detached recital of Joan Didion's precise, analytic book, one hears a clear, informative view of one author's journey. More head than heart, you will understand Didion's persona, but you probably will not be brushing away tears.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Talk Radio - March 2007

Liev Schreiber is Talk Radio, magnetic in his malipulative maliciousness, riveting to watch as he dissolves and re-emerges through moods of anger, humor, restlessness, frustration and emotional crisis. He is believable in every utterance, every rant, every twitch. With dialogue like — "This country is rotten to the core, this country is in deep trouble. . .and somebody better do something about it" — he gets the opportunity to render a tour-de-force in Eric Bogosian's cynical Talk Radio.

Bogosian's theatrical explosion of ego concentrates on one man, one night, one talk radio show, but reflects on an entire genre of shock entertainment that continues today. The show was first performed 20 years ago at the Public Theater, when the author portrayed Cleveland talk-show host Barry Champlain. Bogosian's target was those self-important talk show hosts, and has now been spruced up by Robert Falls' lean, mean direction and mainly by Schreiber's star turn.

Barry Champlain is just on the cusp of going national. He distains everyone, including his listeners and himself, yet sees himself as omnipotent. Despite his drug abuse, breakdown, and inevitable self-destructiveness, his radio audience cannot get enough, reveling as he alternately spews insults, toxic wit, and schmoozes humiliation on the telephone call-ins. He fills the in-between moments with vitriolic outbursts, physically twitching, his leg jumping. He chain-smokes, guzzles coffee and Jack Daniels, does some coke and swills Pepto Bismol. Off the air, he explodes at the staff. His intensity simmers and bursts, but Schreiber never loses his grip. Then at the end, after a barrage of spewing, he breaks apart.

"I come in every night, make my case,

make my point, say what I believe in!

I tell you what you are.

I have to. I have no choice.

You frighten me…"

Realizing that his ire, his fears, the turmoil all around him, it's all mere entertainment. He can't speak. For an endless moment, only Schreiber's face reflects the pain he feels at his inability to articulate. He regains his speech, but the night is over.

Secondary characters fill out the evening. Bathed in sudden harsh light, they face and enlighten the audience about Barry Champlain. It sounds like a good plan, but serves more as a interruption to the main ring, Champlain himself. They break the momentum of Barry Champlain. He is simply more interesting. Unexplainably, Champlain had managed to attract a beautiful assistant/girlfriend, Linda, played by Stephanie March. He treats her like dirt, and understandably, she gets sick of it, but March does not compellingly capture Linda.

His longtime friend, Stu, is the airwaves' velvet rope guard, played by Michael Laurence; his station boss, Dan (Peter Hermann), who helped form this talkative monster, explains,."I keep him on the track. ... I let him go as fast as he can."

The set of a Cleveland radio station was designed efficiently by Mark Wendland, Barry Champlain's desk with two microphones, backed by a glass-enclosed booth where we see the technical staff alternately bored and alerted with the live broadcast.

Several actors provide voices for a parade of call-ins. The interest level in these callers runs hot and cold, all pathetic pleadings for attention and egos demanding equal time. The most memorable call-in is Kent, played by Sebastian Stan, a moronic kid high on drugs. Champlain invites Kent to the station, but then does not want to let him in. Their eventual interaction shows off two characters on parallel babble lines. It's old stuff, but after 20 years, the line, "Your fear, your own lives have become entertainment" remains true in an era of celebrity glittering with high wattage on radio and television, blogs, and media that won't quit.

Liev Schreiber has the role that spotlights the kind of actor who can grasp the audience by the neck and hold on past the last dying gasp.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Prelude to a Kiss - March 2007

A phonograph player sits centerstage, John Mahoney stands behind it, listening to Billie Holiday's haunting version of Duke Ellington/Irving Gordon's tune with the undeniably romantic lyrics:

"Oh! how my love song gently cries for the tenderness within your eyes
My love is a prelude that never dies
A prelude to a kiss."

So begins Craig Lucas' play, Prelude to a Kiss, currently revived at the American Airlines Theatre by the Roundabout Theatre Company. An intimate tale, this love story provokes gentle laughter and gentle tears, unveiling a fantasy sweetness and charm before you sense the stinging poignancy within a supernatural sheathe.

Originally produced off-Broadway in 1990, and later on Broadway, the play was in contention for a Pulitzer Prize. Back then its force was believed to be driven by the AIDS epidemic. Today, with the epidemic on the back burner, at least in the United States, the driving force is said to be the dangerous political situation in the world. Whichever way the play affects you, much credit goes to this production directed by Daniel Sullivan and its remarkable cast led by Alan Tudyk, Annie Parisse, and John Mahoney and the love story between them.

Peter (Tudyk) and Rita (Parisse) meet at a cocktail party, a slightly insecure guy and a goofy girl with nihilistic, socialistic ideas. If opposites attract, their attraction is instant. They fall in love and Rita brings Peter home to meet her parents, played with doting and spirited enthusiasm by James Rebhorn and Robin Bartlett. A wedding is planned. By this time, plenty of clues have been planted, indicating physical chemistry, Rita's quirkiness, pessimism and fears, and Peter's acceptance of everything she is. All this makes us suspend belief in the upcoming events. Finally, we recognize the subtext of human fears.

But first, back to the wedding. Rita is beyond nervous, verging of hysteria, but the ceremony goes off, albeit shakily. On one side appears an old man, Julius Becker (John Mahoney), mysterious, seemingly innocuous, and about to set the whole situation on its head. While he is not an invited guest, he asks to kiss the bride for luck. Why not, it's tradition? As they kiss, however, they exchange souls. Immediately, the willowy, freethinking Rita takes on new characteristics, the old man's brusque masculine movements, conservative ideas and go-for-broke bravado. Mahoney is equally on target, deftly exchanging his body language for her delicacy and speech mannerisms. Both project their new personalities with believability.

It is not until after their confusing honeymoon is over that Peter acknowledges that Rita is not herself. Who is she? He finds out when he goes to the saloon where Rita used to tend bar and there he meets Becker. Suddenly it is obvious to him that Rita lives within the body of that stranger.

Authenticating this situation depends on subtle updating by Craig Lucas, adroit handing by Sullivan, and credible performances by Parisse, Tudyk and Mahoney. In this production, Mahoney shines as the emotional core, an old man coping with lung cancer but projecting an inner sensuality he never recognized. Mahoney's engaging charm keeps the play of love and loss aloft, steering clear of melodrama. As the couple in crisis, Parisse and Tudyk are persuasive, Tudyk the steadying force of the three characters.

Whatever propels the play's purpose, one point is obvious; life is a mystery, embrace it, get what you can out of it.

John Mahoney's mysterious old man states, "Never wish for anything you're not prepared to receive."

He also concludes with tender potency, "We might as well have a good time while we're here, don't you think?"

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Journey's End - February 2007

As wrenching as the visual bloodbath in films like, Saving Sergeant Ryan, live theatre can also slam war into the senses with a personal immediacy. Journey’s End mixes the trite of war with the terror, always building the stress of waiting, frustration, and monotony. You know something is going to happen. The Germans are 70 yards away and closing in, but with meticulous pacing, director David Grindley keeps the tense momentum for over two hours until all hell explodes. It continues exploding after the play ends and the curtain descends, and just past the point when you feel – "Enough!". It is an impact.

R.C. Sherriff was a British insurance agent and a veteran of World War I when he wrote Journey’s End. It was first produced in 1929. It is largely conversation, no action, a repetitive, terse, colloquial account about waiting:

"When anything happens, it happens quickly. Then we just start waiting again,” says one soldier.

All the time, bombs and gunshots crack the monotony. The story takes place over four days in a trench in France, close to the front lines, where a group of soldiers gather and part, have meals, talk, always aware that an attack, and possibly their death, is imminent.

Jefferson Mays, given top billing, has a lesser role, but is wryly compelling as the cook, mixing and serving unpalatable meals, always with the last word. Boyd Gaines authoritatively portrays Osborne, a down-to-earth veteran, nicknamed "Uncle" by the younger men. He is second-in-command to Captain Stanhope, convincingly played by Hugh Dancy in a role first performed in a reading by Lawrence Olivier. Stanhope once had all the promise of a leader but would be totally burned out after three years of war if he were not self-medicating with alcohol. Stark Sands is the nervous Raleigh, 18 years old, ready and eager to be in Stanhope 's troop, since Stanhope was his idol in school. As Trotter, John Ahlin portrays a portly easy going chap, and Justin Blanchard plays Hibbert, who is pretending pain from neuralgia to get sent home on medical disability. In a lesser role, Kieran Campion plays a terror-filled captured German soldier.

This is an ensemble of first-rate portrayals of victims of war's desolation and hardship. The soldiers are all terror-stricken yet they have a duty to perform and responsibilities to each other. Watching them keep, and occasionally lose, that stiff upper-lip is riveting to watch.

Jason Taylor's dusky lighting on a claustrophobic set by Jonathan Fensom designs the feel of tension and fear. The sound design by Gregory Clarke is relentless. Journey’s End does not actually shake the Belasco Theatre in the finale, but it seems to reverberate with deafening screams and blasts long and loud enough to settle into the bones of the audience. When the tumult ends, the curtain rises again to present the cast flooded in an eerie, flat light in front of a wall inscribed with fallen soldiers' names. In the performance reviewed here, the audience was too stunned to rise, their unusual silence and the lack of "Bravos!" said everything about a play with impact.

We have been subjected to shock and awe in real time and subjected to unending violence in films and television. We have certainly learned more about modern weapons of mass destruction than we want to know. Journey’s End was written by The Great War, the one that would end all wars. With many millions killed and wounded in that war, you would think the point would have been made. We know that war is hell, but Sherriff's point is that it is also repetitive, boring, agonizing, sometimes necessary, and manages to bring out the respect and affection soldiers appreciate in each other.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Suddenly Last Summer - November 2006

Bring a fan. You can almost feel the suppressive humidity in Santo Loquasto's tropical New Orleans garden setting in Suddenly Last Summer at the Laura Pels Theatre. How very fitting to watch the self-contained steel magnolia, Violet Venable, played by Blythe Danner, using all her Southern enticements to manipulate the story of her son, Sebastian's death. This is the most suffocating and gothic of Tennessee Williams's plays, with two delusional women unreeling their decadent tales of celibacy and homosexuality, artistry and cannibalism, mother love and incest. And all this melodramatic poetry in one act.

Directed by Mark Brokow, the story opens as Violet Venable meets with Dr. Cukrowicz, a name translated as "Sugar". Flirtatiously, Catharine dubs him, "Dr. Sugar." Through one of the two female monologues that formulate the play, we learn that she is trying to find out the truth how her 40-year-old son really died during a trip to Spain last year. Violet blames her niece Catharine Holly, who comes from the less refined side of the family, for spouting outrageous stories about Sebastian. Living in a self-delusional world, the vain Violet wants the world to hear a more acceptable version and she is willing to donate a sizable amount of money for Dr. Sugar's experimental clinic with the proviso that he performs a lobotomy on Catharine.

Violet is a doting mother, convinced of Sebastian's poetic brilliance and his choice to be celibate. In previous years, she and Sebastian always traveled together. "It was never Mrs. Venable and her son," Violet tells the doctor. "Always Violet and Sebastian." Like a platonically romantic couple. Sebastian, however, used Violet much as he would later use Catharine. Last year, however, Violet suffered a mild stroke and Sebastian invited his cousin, Catharine to accompany him on the trip. Violet was not happy.

The second monologue belongs to Catharine, a voluptuous, fidgety young woman, in a vivid performance by Carla Cugina, who was also outstanding in the recent Arthur Miller revival of After the Fall. After an injection of sodium pentothal, her detailed account of Sebastian's death forms the dramatic focus of the play. As she tells it, Sebastian used her as bait in Cabeza de Lobo, luring in the young men for Sebastian to enjoy until he was killed and devoured by a group of wild, hungry beggars on the beach.

Catharine returned home psychically battered. Violet arranged for her hospitalization with Dr. Sugar, and after Catharine was stabilized, the young woman moved to the more restful atmosphere of St. Anne's. To silence the memories of Catharine's feverish recollections, however, Violet wants her back with Dr. Sugar, and silenced for good.

Gale Harold is disappointing and undistinguished as Dr. Sugar, bringing little depth to the character. At times, in fact, he seems ill at ease with these florid characters around him – and who can blame him? Two secondary characters, Catharine's mother (Becky Ann Baker) and brother (Wayne Wilcox), convincingly portray greedy, self-absorbed individuals who care nothing for Catharine but only for Sebastian's will. They are straight out of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Sandra Shipley plays Sister Felicity, Catharine's unduly harsh caretaker.

With brittle audacity, Blythe Danner portrays a woman of steely resolve who has always done things her way, and will get her way now, despite her breathing problems and fragility. Catharine slowly unveils her own strength and resolve to follow her path, a complexity that Cugina sells with authority.

While his language is always poetic and often beautiful, Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer is less layered than plays like, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Name Desire. In this Roundabout Theatre Company production, it only sometimes touches its potential within the steaminess of Loquasto's lush garden starring the carnivorous Venus flytrap, the legacy of the enigmatic Sebastian Venable.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Southern Comforts - October 2006

"When it comes to love, sometimes the hardest part is not finding someone, but learning how to live with that person once you do," writes Kathleen Clark. A truism-- and the basis of Clark's personal, well ordered, romantic play, Southern Comforts, with two characters, Amanda and Gus, based on her grandparents.

Directed by Judith Ivey with crisp attention to small details, the play suffuses the feel of an earlier age. It is old-fashioned and sentimental, zapped with moments of spice steering the story and its characters into your heart, although probably not the hearts of 20- and 30-somethings. For folks who have been around, seen enough, and experienced enough to discern what is real and important, Southern Comforts offers simple patent pleasures.

Gus has always lived in New Jersey, and after World War II, he never yearned to travel again. He is retired stonemason and a widower. He lives alone, kind of crusty, overly tidy, and set in his ways. He is cautious, and the sound of thunder evokes memories of the war.

When Amanda appears at his doorstep to give him a pledge notice from the church, he has no intention of reorganizing his life. Amanda was born in Tennessee and still lives there, a steel magnolia of sorts who raised her daughter alone after her husband died. She is visiting her daughter who now lives with her own family in New Jersey. Amanda is an active lady, still curious about life and people. The only thing she has in common with Gus is their advanced age and love of baseball.

Since it is raining outside, Amanda decides to linger awhile with Gus in his house, and this begins a companionship of sorts. By the next scene, they are attending church together, and Amanda is delaying her planned return to Tennessee. Gus gets used to having her around, telling her that she's, “Sort of like a good cup of coffee. You keep me awake.” Together they watch ballgames, and grudgingly, he lets her shift around his sparse furniture, setting two chairs together so they can talk. She chatters at him and he replies mumpishly. She helps him with the storm windows. The scenes follow one another without intermission like pebbles ruffling a placid lake.

It is no surprise when they marry, yet while each step is an adjustment for Amanda; it is an upheaval for the rigid yet compliant Gus. His furniture, for example, is of the bare-necessities decorating school, and he is fine with that, but when Amanda moves in, she brings along all her things from Tennessee, bookcases, draperies, a sofa, armchairs, a lifetime of collections. This is overwhelming for Gus.
Appealingly played by Keith Davis and Penny Fuller, the two confront the unfolding problems facing new couples after they have lived long lives alone. This comes to a head when the two plan to buy a cemetery plot. Questions arise, which both Amanda and Gus took for granted. What will the gravestone say? Since both were married before, which spouse take precedent? Who will rest with whom?

Set in the present, Amanda and Gus's age situation is a bit questionable; the story states that they are in their 70's, but as a World War II veteran, Gus would already be in his 80's. That aside, both characters are portrayed with natural comfort. Fuller's Amanda blends Southern girlish charm with the grit of a grown independent woman. Davis, stepping in for Biff McGuire, shows natural ease in his stolid role as Gus.
The play takes place on one set, Gus' living room, designed by Thomas Lynch with evocative seasonal lighting by Brian Nason and sound by T. Richard Fitzgerald. Joseph G. Aulisi's costumes are age-appropriate, Gus in everyday casual garb probably similar to what he has worn over the past several decades. Amanda reflects the suburban lady with a tasteful flair.

Southern Comforts is the second offering of Primary Stages at 59East59 Street Theatre. Coming up is a new musical, Adrift in Macao followed by the world premiere of Terrence McNally's Deuce.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Jay Johnson: My Two and Only - October 2006

Ventriloquism – puppetry. They're different, but if you're not a fan, who cares?

You'll care, after you see! Johnson, who wrote and stars in the one-man show, declares, "I was absolutely born to do this." This is Johnson's passion, and he makes us care. During the course of the one-man show, Johnson brings to life a puppet marathon of carefully carved characters to entertain and move the audience with humor, sentiment and information.

Johnson is a boyish-looking Texan who reached a television audience in the late 70's playing Chuck on Soap, partnered with Bob, his smart-ass puppet. Some would call Bob a dummy, but Johnson prefers, "wooden American." After years of touring and a successful run off-Broadway in 2004, Johnson is now presenting his creativity and impressive talent on Broadway's fairly intimate Helen Hayes Theatre. The charm is a touching and witty look back at his own life, focusing on his enchantment with ventriloquism. Chatting casually, he also shares some history of ventriloquism, which goes back to the Oracle at Delphi and the Dark Ages. That history is often not pretty. There are those who called it wickedness lurking in the human belly. Others felt it was demonic. Some practitioners were executed.

Johnson became enchanted with voice throwing at age six when he found his cousin's Jerry Mahoney doll and made it talk. Throwing his voice came easy to him. He was also fascinated by a radio show starring Big John and Sparky. An old-time vaudeville legend in the art, Arthur G. Sieving, later took an interest in the young man and carved Squeaky, who was Johnson's first puppet. Sieving also taught his eager student how the puppet is made, from the type of wood to the varnish and daily care. He told Johnson that when he puts the puppet back in his trunk, he must place a black cloth over his eyes. They stayed in close touch over the years.

The surprising part is how you start looking forward to the puppets, some of whom are hilarious. There is Spaulding, the loquacious tennis ball, and a sock-puppet snake named Amigo. How about Darwin, a hyperkinetic monkey, who sings, after a fashion, Sondheim's Send in the Clowns? Nethernore, a menacing vulture, "trained to kill," delivers a lusty My Way.

Johnson is a fine actor with comic timing, who communicates warmly with the audience. He has a versatile voice that brings a range of colors to his various puppets. He takes his art seriously, and subtly, he makes his audience feel his passion. A touching moment tells of his saying having to say farewell to his first puppet, Squeaky, before taking the role in Soap. The show wanted Johnson but not the sweet, red-cheeked Squeaky. Soap called for a new, edgier puppet, the sarcastic Bob. Johnson embraced Squeaky one last time and gently placed him in the trunk with the black cloth over his eyes.

Another touching moment came when Johnson called Sieving and learned he had died just days before. Sieving, however, had told his wife that Johnson would be calling soon and he had a gift for him. When Johnson went to meet the widow, she gave him a trunk that Johnson recognized as belonging to Sieving's own puppet, Harry O'Reilly. Sieving had told her that for years, his family was Harry O'Reilly and Jay Johnson, and if you think that does not touch the heartstrings…

Directed by Murphy Cross and Paul Kreppel, Jay Johnson: My Two and Only! is not a show that will have you watching if he moves his lips. Actually, you will not even care, but he is consummate at his art, even putting band-aids on his and his Bob's mouths at one point to make that point. A must-see is his Magic Marker sketch on a board that he then brings it to life. As Johnson claims, "Sometimes we just need to believe."

Beowulf Boritt designed a plain set and backdrop aimed to display the puppet trunks. While there are some risqué moments, it is child-appropriate for those who can pay attention for an hour and a half.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Sisters - September 2006

For drama, turn first to the family. It remains fodder for all tragedy and Irish playwrights are masters of the game. In Declan Hassett's Sisters, Anna Manahan, Tony Award winner for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, portrays Martha and Mary Clooney, two conflicted members of a dysfunctional Irish family in the 1950's

"When you are young," Martha comments at one point, "life is all little pieces; a sort of jig-saw." In Sisters, both women remember their own versions of life's puzzle.

In Act I, Manahan portrays Martha carrying in the cake she has baked to celebrate her 70th birthday. A bitter and resentful woman, Martha is waiting for her sister, whom she sarcastically calls, "her God almighty highness." While she feels Mary had enjoyed the privileges of being the mother's favorite, Martha was inordinately close to her father who died when she was young. Her stories about him are the only instances when her eyes soften and her spirit lightens. She remembers his taking her to sports events and how, after dinner, the two would head for the pub, Martha perched on her father's handlebars as they flew down the road. Her mother and Mary remained behind.

When her father died of a sudden heart attack, Martha was distraught. The Clooneys and the town later discovered that he was involved with the pub's waitress, who left town.

When Mary went off to teach school in Dublin, Martha remained in the family home to care for her ailing mother who was hostile toward Martha and waited only for Mary's occasional visit. Martha's life was cooking, cleaning, and going to church. She worked in a small local shop and envied Mary's imagined "la-de-da" life in the city. Her own The mother, Martha's social life was bare, and when she fell for a handsome stranger at a dance, she wound up a rape victim.

Act II, after Martha's death, belongs to Mary, who recalls events differently. Mary's resentment is against her father, his philandering, and his closeness to Martha. Although Martha believed that their mother favored Mary, Mary states firmly that this was not true. In Dublin her life was lonely and difficult, far from glamorous. Like Martha, she never married, and being the more reserved sister, she does not bare her emotions as easily. Neither is sympathetic, there is a cold bleakness to both. Martha occasionally screams out in fury, but Mary remains clipped and chill. Only at the end, does she face the audience with a mad, silent glare, acknowledging the consequences of what she has done. And then she smiles benignly.

The two live parallel lives, but there is in each, a secret that for years, neither knew the other shared. They were each raped, and that experience serves as the dramatic crisis in the play. Remembering the sensibilities of these two Irish Catholic women, it ties them together just as it violently rips them apart.

Manahan portrays both women with intensity, adding subtle layers, filling out both differences and similarities. Michael Scott directs the play at a leisurely pace, edging in the climax with harsh suddenness. The bleakness portrayed is duplicated in Michael McCaffery's costume designs, Martha drab and careless, and Mary in a trim, tailored suit. The staging by Stuart Marshall places a rural touch of woodchips banking each side, and Michael Scott's lighting provides atmospheric scene and time changes.

Sisters was written for Anna Manahan and debuted at the The City Theatre of Dublin. Declan Hassett's Sisters does not match the in-depth decisive family examinations by other Irish playwrights like Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson, but Manahan's performance lends it conviction in the universality of family drama.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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The Treatment - September 2006

The Culture Project begins its six-week Impact Festival dealing with the impact of torture. Eve Ensler's The Treatment, directed by Leigh Silverman, discusses the post-traumatic aftermath suffered by an army sergeant who had cruelly tortured prisoners of war. The sergeant is given no name and interacts only with the second character, an army psychologist, also unnamed. Imbued is the question of accountability: Is the victimizer always responsible for overly harsh military interrogations or have the rules of the game changed? "The new world is more dangerous," says the sergeant. Should certain conditions unique to modern times mollify his guilt? Why do the military and political higher-ups manage to shield themselves from culpability?

These aspects are not incisively studied. They are, in fact, avoided, like "Abu Ghraib" and "Iraq," the other pink elephants in this green military office. The Treatment does not reach out to the universality of torture, power, sex and violence.

Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) wrote the two-person play for her stepson, Dylan McDermott, who grasps the role with edgy explosiveness. At the start, the traumatized army interrogator, jittery and resistant, is constantly poised to bolt from his chair, scream, and throw furniture around. He is tortured by incessant noises inside his head and cannot sleep. He taunts the psychologist, trying to crack her unflappable demeanor, and this interplay of explosiveness and control builds an interesting tension.

The psychologist is played with untouchable chill by Portia. Her job is to counsel him. Or is it? Their behaviors later begin to shift, focusing in large part to the intrusion of sexual energy/violence. Who is torturing whom? Who is the interrogator?

Ensler wrote a part her stepson could really sink his teeth into, and this he did. McDermott, best known for TV's The Practice, has a chunk of emotionalism to chew on. His angst and suffering move at a rapid pace, overwhelming the underlying questions of torture that might be addressed. With so much noise and angst, the drama begins to seep out of the 70-minute play.

McDermott, projecting much energy into the role, seems stiff and uneasy with the starting dialogue. Only later does he appear to sink into the character. Portia stays in her controlled therapist mode. Yet being nameless and without much fleshing out, both characters remain just symbols and therefore they are hard to engage with emotionally. He is distraught, yes. War provokes terrible actions. We do not find out until the end what the sergeant actually did to his prisoner, and by then medical ethics are breached, the plot shifts and the play ends abruptly. We are left with no new insights, nor even much to talk about.

The set by Richard Hoover is appropriately drab military metal with vinyl furniture. For some reason, the psychologist seems to live in this office all the time, never even changing from her uniform. Justin Townsend's lighting adds subtle time changes. Add the pounding and clanging sound effects by Jill duBoff to the furniture trashing and screaming voices, this is one noisy play.

The Impact Festival concentrates on human rights and political action, and today, a treatise on torture is most relevant. Unfortunately, The Treatment, despite the energetic and talented performances, is a disappointing opening project, and not up to Eve Ensler's usual enticing work

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Indian Blood – August 2006

A. R. Gurney is not usually included in the pantheon of leading American playwrights like Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and William Inge, though he has produced a solid output of elegant and skilled work. Not as flamboyant or dramatic as Williams, Arthur Miller, and Inge, Gurney's subjects focus on one aspect of society, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants living in the upper strata of our socio-economic structure. While he occasionally touches down on more political ground, the core of most of his plays concentrate on the genteel classes. He does not exactly skewer, but pokes knowingly at their privileged foibles, elucidating how they affect the rest of us. Indian Blood is a good example of this, a sententious memoir opening the current season of Primary Stages.

The story takes place within the establishment social class of Buffalo, New York where Gurney was born. It is 1946. Sixteen-year-old Eddie always seems to be getting into trouble, but he has an excuse for this. He blames his behavior on his "Indian blood;" there is the belief that there is a Seneca Indian in a family tree. Eddie was caught in Latin class with obscene sketches he did of Injun Joe (Tom Sawyer) and Glinda the Good Witch (Wizard of Oz), squealed on by his dorky second cousin, Lambert. The teacher did not accept devilish Eddie's "Indian blood" excuse, and suspended him from school for three weeks.

Eddie acts as narrator and guide to the story, commenting on everything, turning to the audience to get his point across. He lives with his conservative father, Harvey, with whom he suffers the usual father-son conflicts. His understanding mother, Jane, is typical of the era and secondary in importance to the man in the house, resenting the fact that her husband lives under the thumb of his mother. Jane is, however, a spunky woman, and has her say at the end of the play, easing the tensions in her family.

Despite his misbehaviors, Eddie knows now to get around his doting and spoiled grandmother, and he admires his mischievous grandfather, who is really behind the legend of the familiar "Indian blood." The center of the play takes place at the family Christmas dinner, where various family conflicts come to the forefront, including Eddie's fight with cousin Lambert.

The plot may be slim, but the characters are likeable and believable. The family dynamics are relevant to the social climate of Buffalo, which has been declining in recent years. Eddie's father blames the decline on fading WASP influence. The grandfather agrees but feels the WASPS are taking the wrong path; they are "obsolete" now, he says, and should embrace the city's new arrivals, even the "Negro."

Eddie is compellingly played by Charles Socarides who holds his own against the other actors, although John McMartin as the grandfather is an irresistible charmer. Jeremy Blackman is on target as the nerdy cousin with understandable problems, but he is certainly the schoolmate or relative everyone can resent.

Eddie's mother, Rebecca Luker, while devoted to her family, does not let herself get bested by her in-laws or her stiff husband played admirably by Jack Gilpin. She also gets a poignant moment to show off her gorgeous voice singing You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To at the annual Christmas celebration. Pamela Payton-Wright portrays the grandmother, whose fragile demeanor and appearance belie her power in the family.

Lighting by Howell Binkley sets a nostalgic ambience on a spare set by John Arlone. The actors move the chairs around, easily arranging new settings. In the background are projected slides of Buffalo circa WWII, and Ann Hould-Ward's costumes are reflective of the '40's. Director Mark Lamos moves the story along with sensitivity, wit and understanding with definite theatrical flavoring.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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A Stone Carver -- August 2006

Starring Dan Lauria as Agostino Malatesta, a proud, stubborn, infuriating Sicilian patriarch, William Mastrosimone's A Stone Carver, is as much about the separation of generations, division of cultures, and shattered dreams, as it is of urban redevelopment and the state's ability to take away private land by right of "eminent domain." This noble sounding phrase, "eminent domain," more often than not leads to heartbreak. In an Off-Broadway premiere at the Soho Playhouse, Mastrosimone's semi-autobiographical play directed by Robert Kalfin indicates how this edict affected his own family in 1969.

Agostino is a lumbering hulk with Old World ethics, who worked all his life carving angels, gargoyles, and cherubs, building a business in New Jersey. When he fell from a scaffold during a job, he lost the artistic core of himself, and when his wife died several years ago, most of his heart went with her. Now, while an Enrico Caruso recording plays on an old turntable in his kitchen, a bulldozer sits outside poised to raze the limestone structure he built to last "for eternity." In its place will be a highway off-ramp. His windows were broken by vandalizing kids, his house is populated with rats, and his neighbors have all relinquished their homes. Still, Agostino stands firm, furied by a stony grit inherited from the bleak Sicilian hills.

Enter his only living son, Raff (Jim Iorio), with whom he has been estranged. Raff refused to become a stone carver like the seven generations of Malatestas before him. Instead, he owns a successful construction company; he is a community leader and now he comes one last time to convince Agostino to bow to the inevitable and leave the house. With him is his fiancée, Janice (Elizabeth Rossa), coming to meet Agostino for the first time.

Agostino greets them with invectives, insults, a baseball bat, and a shotgun. Janice has been warned about him and is determined to take what he throws at her. It's not easy. When she offers him the gift of a French wine, he refuses with disdain. Not only is she a blonde non-Sicilian, but her father is a lawyer, the worst of the worst for Agostino. Agostino taunts her relentlessly, calling her "pasta asciutto" ("dry pasta"). While you have to admire his spirit, it is easy to see how frustrated he makes everyone. He is a brute, crude, incorrigible, and it takes every ounce of patience for Raff to try to rescue the old man.

Their hostile relationship is painfully evident through almost two hours with no intermission. There are flashing glimpses of Agostino's life with his late wife, Emma, whose face, we learn, is on all the angels he has carved, including the one he is still working on in his kitchen. Agostino, macho and competitive even with his son, provokes Raff to put on boxing gloves and "be a man." This scene promises a dramatic peak, but unfortunately falters. It is Janice who finally turns the tide, realizing that the house and Agostino are one, with all his dreams, hopes, memories part of the masonry. It is she who finds a path around the old man's stubbornness, and finally cajoles him to comply with the inevitable.

Dan Lauria balances Agostino's boorishness with an earthy humor, his love for his wife and Italian opera. Jim Iorio, as Raff capably seesaws from giving up and trying again. We see similarities between the two, stubbornness, temper, defiance. Raff is a cleaned-up, polished Agostino.

Nathan Heverin designed a seedy kitchen set, the last livable space in this once-proud house. Josh Bradford's lingering lighting effectively illustrates the long hours that the family spends trying to tolerate each other. Director Robert Kalfin gamely keeps the hostility tension high.

Mastrosimone's A Stone Carver is fueled by the passion of his own experience. It is not the social thesis of Clifford Odets or the delving everyman family drama of Arthur Miller, but he brings a tale familiar in many cultures and relationships. Agostino's character is intolerable; it is difficult to imagine, even with the brief glimpses of warmth, that anyone would tolerate his bombastic behavior. At the end, watching him leave the house with only his treasured Caruso record, there is a sense of understanding, but not tears.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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The House in Town-- July 2006

John Lee Beatty's jewel box set and Catherine Zuber's lustrous costumes, seem to affirm the F. Scott Fitzgerald comment, "The rich are different from you and me." Richard Greenberg's The House in Town, however, at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, indicates that one wealthy flapper-age couple living on Millionaires' Row on Manhattan's West Side, turns out to have similar problems as anyone else. You see versions regularly on the Lifetime channel. Despite Doug Hughes' fluid direction, Greenberg's verbose dialogue, and the absence of any break, TV commercial or theatre intermission, this 90-minute snapshot of a couple in crisis is a melodrama marching toward the denouement

The play begins just after the New Year of 1929, and we all know what event is about to impact the comfortable life of Sam and Amy Hammer. Not only is the Great Depression looming before them, but across the wide Chelsea street where they have long enjoyed an elegant lifestyle, the construction of London Terrace, a huge apartment complex, threatens not only their view and their sunlight, but figuratively darkens their future. In their townhouse, they are relaxing after their New Year's party, chatting with best friends, Jean and Con. As Amy (Jessica Hecht) chatters away with the brittle Jean (Becky Ann Baker), we learn that she yearns for a baby and is about to "return" to having sex with her workaholic husband, Sam. Before the term "biological clock" was popular, Amy is feeling the ravages of impending menopause and believes one more try may change things.

There are interesting contrasts between Sam and Amy, physical as well as emotional. Amy looks the part of a soft, gentle, hopeful wife who has always done her perfect wife job. Sam, played by the stern-jawed Mark Harelik, resembles the hard-nosed, rigid businessman that he is. Sam has recently shown a uniquely strong interest in one of his young clerks working in his successful department store. What sort of interest? Patience – the story does emerge, mostly due to the multilayered performances by Hecht and Harelik. Greenberg reveals the social fabric they live in, with values and bigotry like the impersonal reference of servants as "the Irish" and the underlying prejudice of Amy's WASP family, and Amy herself, toward her Jewish husband.

Ultimately, The House in Town is Amy's show, and Hecht does a strong job of forming the character of a woman faced with impending disaster. How she handles it is the force of the story. When the truth about her husband emerges, the rather vacuous naivete she buoyantly portrays through three-quarters of the play slowly reveals a steely core she never knew she had, nor could we anticipate. How Sam handles the situation is equally contradictory to his super-conservative demeanor.

Jean, Amy's friend, Jean, is gossipy and mean-spirited; Amy doesn't quite approve of Jean yet confides in her. Jean keeps her informed with real life and the gossip whirling in their social set. Armand Schultz as Jean's husband, Con, is a gynecologist who performs necessary illegal procedures.

These four actors reveal their individualism in compact ways. Dan Bittner plays Christopher Valence, the young clerk with jittery apprehension. Except for the mystery connection with Sam, he is referred to more than actually present.

The characters' turmoil and the encroachment of the outside world with new problems merge the story and the set, with its plush interior against the hard gray girders outside. Brian MacDevitt's lighting enhances these contrasts as does David Van Tieghem's sound design. The show constantly balances hard and soft, light and dark, comfort and danger, until upheaval takes over. The story may not be new or particularly dramatic, but the direction, creatives and actors take it back to the era where it is set, and illuminate the emotional chaos that finally ends the carefully paced story arc.

The rich are different from you and me? The House in Town displays, rather than probes, intimate problems of universality and how much or little, cash, credit and power will help smooth the march of time.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Pig Farm -- June 2006

There's something about pigs that appeal to us -- "this little piggy…." The Three Little Pigs, Charlotte's Web, Miss Piggy, George Clooney's famous pet pig, and probably skipping over a few, we're now at Pig Farm. Directed by John Rando, the Roundabout Theatre Company with The Old Globe presents this world-premiere slapstick/satire at the Laura Pels Theatre.

Writer Greg Kotis, and director Rando were both behind the successful, Urinetown, The Musical, a show with an unappealing title that won over audiences by being clever and funny in its anti-government stance. The same might be said for Pig Farm, except that the malodorous thread of a storyline is spread a bit too thin and too long.

It has its moments, crazy and wacky, yes, if you're in an Animal House kind of mood. The characters are so off-kilter, the lines so unappetizing, and the physical slapstick so reckless; unless you are really yearning for a ticket to Macbeth and instead is handed Pig Farm, there is still material to urge a giggle or two.

The setting -- a pig farm, where life is hard and dirty, very dirty. The time is now, "more or less". The impoverished farm is owned by overworked Tom (John Ellison Conlee) and his neglected wife, Tina (Katie Finneran), who desperately wants a baby. First things first, however, namely the imminent arrival of Environmental Protection Agency inspector, Teddy (Denis O'Hare), for the pig count. This is the federal government, remember, and counting over 15,000 pigs ain't easy, especially in a fierce thunderstorm. Tom has hired a 17-year-old juvenile detainee, Tim (Logan Marshall-Green) to help out with the bone-breaking work.

Tom, Tim, Tina, Teddy -- do you see a theme here? Besides the "T" names, there are other repetitions like the phrase "more or less," as many fecal jokes as can be shoehorned in, surprise pop-ups, pop-downs and a lot of gore. All these wacky characters on the farm exist on the edge of hysteria, and things start exploding pretty fast. When Teddy, the nerdy EPA inspector arrives, he starts out with his gun in holster, his Law and Order lines and his commander-in-chief attitude set to right injustice, like miscounting the pigs and illegally dumping sludge in the river. It's not long before Teddy is part of this conga line of crazies.

The actors are an intense bunch and they deliver their retching frustration with conviction. Tina, with the storm raging outside, finds herself overwhelmed by the proximity of young Tim, who wants to prove his manhood and you know where this leads. When Teddy walks in on them, he's no fool, he sees what's happening and decides he would also try his hand, so to speak, with Tina. Tina can handle herself though, while out on the farm, poor Tom is busy dumping sludge.

Director Rando throws in as much physical comedy as he can. The scene with Teddy falling backwards down the stairs is frighteningly temerarious, Tina wields a mighty rolling pin, and big Tom's fury is fierce. The emotions swing madly from heartbreak to comedy.

With terrific body language, Dennis O'Hare brings a wimpy zealousness to Teddy, lampooning the power of an inept federal government. Kate Finneran is deadly as the overwhelmed Tina, playing with an authoritative mix of restraint and frantic release. As Tim, Marshall-Green is a persuasive sex-driven, work-avoiding, reckless adolescent, and Conlee is just as plausible trying to survive as his marriage and farm are drowning in…well, you know.

Set designer Scott Pask designed a set verging on ramshackle with convincing touches like the water-stained ceiling and cracked linoleum. Gregory Gale's costumes work well,, with and without mud, and lighting by Brian MacDevitt is outstanding, evoking morning or midnight through the splattered windows.

The play, however, needs a heavy edit pen and the intermission could be cut. Pig Farm is for an entertaining hour or so, but running over two-plus hours, it's kind of stinky.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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2005 - 2006

Festen--April 2006

Does Festen shock? The British hit now at the Music Box Theatre, is a Danish drama about family abuse and the distortion it causes in each of its members, and it does outrage, in an ice-cold, spare Nordic way. Festen presents an accusation and its aftermath, watching the characters unravel. If you need objects flying from the rafters and blinding lights and sound for impact, you will be disappointed.

Watching made-for-television movies and following the news has made the public indelible to shock, though it does not change the fact that horrors inflected within a family are especially chilling; they should stun us, the abuse between loved ones should make us shudder.

Director Rufus Norris sharply guided the characters in David Eldridch's play through their manipulations, denials and insistences of what occurred in well-to-do Helge (Larry Bryggman) and Else's (Ali McGraw) family. The occasion is a family reunion celebrating the 60th birthday of father, Helge, a hotel owner. The hotel is reserved this weekend for family and guests arriving from various destinations, including daughter, two sons, one with a wife and daughter, a grandfather, and some close acquaintances, knowing servants, and later, an unexpected guest.

The eldest son, Christian (Michael Hayden), a successful restaurateur living in Paris, is first to arrive. His twin sister committed suicide not long ago and he is deathly restrained, a calm catalyst of what is to come. His younger brother Michael (Jeremy Sisto), obnoxious and loud, arrives next. Although Helge banned him from family gatherings, he still shows up with his coarse wife and unusually well-behaved young daughter. The final family member is Helena (Julianna Margulies), flying in like a tornado, wild, free and distraught. She starts a frantic search for a letter she is certain her late sister left, and ingeniously, she finds it.

The banquet that evening begins graciously hosted by Helge and Else. Christian then makes the first toast, and his deadly words ignite the turmoil when he bluntly accuses his father of unspeakable abuse. The other guests react first with shock, then violent denials which magnify throughout the drama. They seek the comfort of traditional songs, familiar stories, dancing around the table, employing any gloss to keep away the spoken accusations. Questions about the sister's suicide, the mother's culpability (or not), the effects on the other children – are not all answered, but they all provoke more questions. The audience is left with impressions, more of the mind than the heart.

Larry Bryggman plays Helge with a veneer of polish that, despite bursts of outrage and later acknowledgement, will let him survive. As his damaged wife, Ali McGraw rarely varies from expressions of vague distress. Her two speeches could have added considerably to the drama if delivered by an actress able to explore the underpinnings.

Michael Hayden's Christian, the favored son who turns on his parents, and Jeremy Sisto as the troubled brother, are both believably portrayed. Helena, who cannot do enough to embarrass her family, is performed with lusty vigor by Julianna Margulies. In an uncomfortable segment, knowing the others' predictable responses, she has invited her African-American boyfriend (Keith Davis) to join the party.

The story is adapted from the original play and film by Thomas Vinterberg, Mogens Rukov and Bohr Hansen. Ian MacNeil designed a nightmarish black set centered around a long dinner table that glides forward and back, with a rising bed and a lowering chandelier as creative hints of other rooms. MacNeil also provided befitting costumes for the characters; Christian sharp and neat, Helena displaying outrageous rebelliousness, Michael sloppy and uncaring, Else and Helge elegant and pristine.

A sense of dread floats over the production. This group does not turn to analysis to talk out their issues; they are Scandinavians who prefer to turn aside and pretend nothing happened. Nothing, however, can stop the meltdown of the damaged family that ends the show like refuse after a hurricane.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

April 8, 2006

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Grey Gardens - April 2006

They are Peas in a Pod, they sing cheerfully, the real Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Little Edie, two Long Island socialites ignited with delightful spark by Christine Ebersole in Playwrights Horizon's musical version of Grey Gardens. With the scintillation of a Noel Coward comedy and Cole Porter songs, Ebersole brings to life both wealthy matron Edith Beale in Act I and then her daughter, Little Edie in Act II, matured well into her 50's. Her brilliant portrayal of these two delusional ladies will hopefully be remembered and honored. As loony they were, Ebersole brings to them wit and empathy. They are actually lovable -- as long as they are not your relatives.

Perhaps better known as Jacqueline Bouvier's eccentric aunt and cousin, Edith and Little Edie's glory days were spent luxuriating in the Hamptons but their days ended, same mansion, filthy, surrounded by vermin, lack of heat and water, over 50 cats and no litter boxes. Their story was originally told in a 1975 documentary by David and Albert Maysles, based on headlines of the day. Doug Wright's book is a fictionalized musical version of the facts.

The first act takes places on the day Little Edie (Sara Gettelfinger) is to be engaged to Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., played by Matt Cavanaugh. Grey Gardens is ready and polished for the arrival of illustrious guests, including the prospective groom's parents, Joseph and Rose Kennedy. Mother Edith (Ebersole), is determined to entertain with her program of songs, accompanied by her confidant/pianist, George Gould Strong, wryly played by Bob Stillman. Edith is funny and indefatigable, and Gettelfinger's Little Edie is equally resolute to rule her day and not let her mother steamroll the events. It is obvious that the love/hate personalities of these two women will crash throughout their lives.

Circumstances, however, prevent the marriage. There are hints of Little Edie's (Body Beautiful Beale) indiscretions; her father sends a wire that he is off to Mexico with his paramour. Young Kennedy, already a potential Presidential candidate, judges the Beale family a tad too bizarre for his future, and he bolts.

Act II is three decades later. Tumbled-down Grey Gardens is about to be demolished by the Board of Health and the ladies evicted. Ebersole now plays Little Edie, and Mary Louise Wilson is Edith, a demanding bedridden octogenarian. The women live alone, squabbling and reclusive. Their only contact is a handyman, the son of their butler from better days, and a young visitor, Jerry. The plot, however, does not really move much, though director Michael Grief meticulously holds on to the comedy versus tragedy in this happy/bitter story.

Scott Frankel's tunes and Michael Korie's lyrics are infectious with a sound of the Great American Songbook. They dovetail neatly into the pre-WWII ambiance. Some tunes, like the wistful, Will You? in Act I, is poignant. In Act II, Little Edie believes she is as gifted a singer as her mother was convinced of her own talent. She delivers a hilarious song, The Revolutionary Costume For Today, garbed in a convoluted outfit. The absurdity is obvious.

Ebersole rules this play. Gettelfinger portrays young Edie convincingly but is such a belter that even her love duets with Cavanaugh are harsh. Cavanaugh's Kennedy is barely dashing and he overdoes the Massachusetts accent; he does better in the lesser role of Jerry in Act II. Sarah Hyland and Audrey Twitchell portray Jacqueline and Lee Bouvier, Twitchell with eye-catching charisma. Edith's father deftly played by John McMartin, sympathizes with his granddaughter's frustration with her mother. Michael Potts is a deferential butler who shows subtle disbelief when Edith and her nieces sing (All God’s Chillun Love) Hominy Grits. Wilson is a reliable elderly Edith and shines in her moments of caustic wit. She sings Jerry Likes My Corn with amusing nastiness and relives her past glory with The Cake I Had.

Ebersole is dressed in some William Ivey Long sumptuous gowns in Act I. Set by Allen Moyer beautifully showcases patrician elegance in the first act but fails to display how really decrepit the house was by the 1970's.

Grey Gardens has such enjoyable moments that it is particularly regretful that the plot so neglects obvious questions: How did the ladies lose everything?; Why did they neglect themselves? Wright's book, unfortunately, pales where Ebersole shines as the actress without a stage.

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Elizabeth Ahlfors

April 9, 2006

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Rabbit Hole -- February 2006

How do parents deal with the sudden death of a young child? How do the other family members react: Do they -- can they -- help each other, or just isolate into their own hollow spaces? What happens to the driver of the accident car?

In his latest play at the Biltmore Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club's Rabbit Hole, David Lindsay-Abaire moved beyond his often zany looks at life. He aims to break your heart, and under Daniel Sullivan's deft direction, he succeeds with simplicity and without sentimentality. He examines how different – and how diverse they are! – members of one family deal with grief.

The play opens with Becca (Cynthia Nixon), mechanically folding a child's clothes and setting them neatly in a pile while listening to her kid sister, Izzy (Mary Catherine Garrison), prattle on about her own disjoined, say trashy, life. It's an natural, flowing scene, slowly building to some unsettling facts: The folded clothes are on the way to Goodwill. They belonged to Becca and Howie's (John Slattery) four-year-old son, Danny, killed several months earlier, when he chased his dog into the street and was accidentally hit by a teen driver. When Izzy reluctantly reveals that she is accidentally pregnant, we watch Becca tighten up with pain.

Izzy and the sisters' mother, Nat, played by Tyne Daly, are cut from the same outspoken bolt of family cloth, while Becca is grounded, more self-contained than ever. Howie is floundering somewhere in between. How they individually deal with this trauma is one part of the play, how their family dynamic shifts is another. The heartbreak is that all are suffering.

There is yet a third component, the guilt-ridden teenage driver, Jason, played by John Gallagher Jr. who indicates the play's title in the fantasy he wrote about holes in space and parallel lives. Yet, it's hard not to also think of Alice in Wonderland, falling into the rabbit hole of grief, a crazy world where nothing makes sense.

Cynthia Nixon's finely tuned Becca symbolically wraps her arms around her body, trying to keep herself from falling into splinters. She goes about her life methodically, out of touch with e ven her best friend, disinterested in her husband, their relationship and their sex life. Traces of her lost son are painful. She wants to sell the house and all its memories. The dog is already gone. Howie, in contrast, wants to be surrounded by Danny's books and toys. His only solace comes alone in the dark living room after his wife has gone to bed, watching a videotape of his son. There is an agonizing scene when he finds his precious tape has been erased while we see, through Christopher Akerlind's exquisite lighting, Becca's shadow on the stairs, her hand on the wall, silently watching his reaction. She later tells him she "accidentally" erased the tape.

The anguish of this story is leavened by the loquatious Nat, determined to be upbeat. She's obsessed with the Kennedy family "curse," and you have to laugh at her lines until you learn that she had also lost a son. Is four-year-old Danny's death more important than her adult son's overdose? It is not until she helps Becca pack Danny's toys that she expresses the ongoing heartache she also feels. This is the beginning of survival for Becca that extends when she allows Jason, in his own awkward pain, to pay her a visit. Perhaps one of the parallel universes he writes about is where Danny now lives. It is then that she breaks down with wracking sobs, and later, Becca and Howie makes an attempt to move on together. We leave with hope that it will work out, but there is an uneasy option that it may not.

The finely crafted performances are so human that every character shines with his own light. Tyne Daly's levity is subtly grounded in earthiness and pain. Even Izzy, unable to help her sister even if she could get past her personal priorities, adds another meaningful facet to the family drama.

The turntable set by John Lee Beatty, reveals a perfect upscale home highlighting Becca's compulsive coping.

The only problem with this gripping character study is the intermission, which breaks up the emotional momentum. Otherwise, David Lindsay-Abaire, in his brilliantly delivered Rabbit Hole, proves the universality of one family's dynamics. Good theatre doesn't need much more.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

February 2, 2006

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The Trip to Bountiful - January 2006

Carrie Watts is often, as she admits, "a hateful, quarrelsome old woman," but played exquisitely by Lois Smith in The Trip to Bountiful, she also radiates a youthful girlish buoyancy, whether quivering with frustration, luminous in the serene silence of her beloved Bountiful, or saddened by what is lost. Horton Foote's affecting play is enjoying a revival by The Signature Theater Company at the Peter Norton Space, and supported by Harris Yulin's fluid direction, E. David Cosier's wonderful stage design, and a polished cast, Lois Smith portrays the story of Carrie Watts with heart and understanding.

It is pre-World War II. In the opening scene, Carrie, rocking in her chair, gazes at a full moon, letting her spirit take her back to the peaceful years in the rural gulf town where she grew up, Bountiful, a name which is sadly ironic. Her past 20 years in oustonHouston have become unbearable, cramped in a small apartment with her pent-up son, Ludie, and his quarrelsome wife, Jessie Mae. Carrie's health is failing, and Jessie Mae is a nettlesome woman who cannot tolerate Carrie's presence except for her monthly Social Security check. Pesky and nasty, she humiliates Carrie at every turn. Carrie, with a definite sly and manipulative side herself, has been waiting for the right moment to run back to Bountiful where she can be revitalized by the joy and peace of nature and the deep satisfaction of hard work. Each time she's tried to escape, however, they have found her and brought her back home.

Until now. With suitcase and handbag, and a Social Security check safely tucked close to her body, Carrie gets to the bus depot, keeping a sharp eye out for Ludie and Jessie Mae. A young girl also traveling, befriends Carrie, and this simple bus trip takes them both to a spot near Bountiful. Despite the poignancy of a bittersweet conclusion, there is the warmth and positivism characteristic with Horton Foote's character-driven stories, making the show richly satisfying.

Besides the incandescent performance of Lois Smith, the portrayals of other cast members are similarly multi-layered. Ludie (Devon Abner) has given up and shut down at the start of the show, but by the end, after he acknowledges his love and tenderness for Bountiful and his childhood, all of which he has kept suppressed, he appears sturdier and somewhat hopeful for the future. Jessie Mae is certainly nasty, but in the final scene, Haallie Foote brings out her complexity lending an understanding, if not sympathy to her character. Two lesser roles are Meghan Andrews as Thelma, Carrie's new traveling friend, sweet and understanding. The sheriff who finally finds Carrie is played by Jim Demarse, embodying the role with great warmth and concern.

Harris Yulin's staging in the intimate Peter Norton Space focuses in on these characters and their universal situation of adjusting to life's changes. John McKernon's lighting design illuminates each setting – the apartment, the bus depots, Bountiful – with nostalgic ambience, and costumes by Martin Pakledinaz are period-perfect, Smith wrapping those housedresses around her like protective shrouds

Respecting the brilliant performance by Geraldine Page as Carrie Watts in her Academy Award winning portrayal in the film, Lois Smith more than holds her own with layered depth. The Signature Theater Company is offering this revival for $15 a ticket. To say it's a bargain is ridiculous; it would really be ridiculous to let this memorable The Trip to Bountiful pass you by.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

January 10, 2006

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Souvenir: A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins - November 2005

Sometimes following your bliss is not so terrific, at least for those watching you. If you doubt that, remember the tale of Florence Foster Jenkins in Souvenir at the Lyceum Theatre.

Jenkins was a wealthy lady during the first half of the 20th century, who convinced herself that she was a talented coloratura soprano. "Convinced" is putting it mildly; there was not the slightest doubt in her mind, and she was determined and rich enough to prove it. Considering how wrong Florence Foster Jenkins was, In less capable hands, Souvenir could turn into a sad study of delusion and pathos. Gently put, her singing was chalk pressed across the blackboard, an alley cat in heat, a sonic screech. She had no sense of rhythm or pitch. The music Jenkins heard in her head was nowhere near the sounds that came out of her mouth for others to hear.

She had, nevertheless, confidence, and she was determined to share what she felt was her gift. She arranged yearly concerts at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel for her friends, loving every minute of rehearsing and performing. In 1944, she managed an engagement at Carnegie Hall. It was sold-out, which is hard to believe, until you realize that Jenkins had gained quite a following. Her recordings were collectors' items, and obviously not for her glorious talent.
Vivian Matalon directed Stephen Temperley's two-character "play with music," starring Donald Corren as Jenkins' long suffering accompanist, Cosmo McMoon. The story is told with protective sensitivity through McMoon's eyes, although he admits, "Her folly was so stupendous you had to admire its scale. Like the Chrysler Building." The lady herself is played by Judy Kaye, a performer who is talented enough to make Florence Foster Jenkins believable and even sympathetic. What could turn out to be a stretched-out one-joke minor show in lesser hands, Souvenir instead evokes curiosity, hilarious laughter, and even tears at the end, when Jenkins' Carnegie Hall apogee veers to bewilderment and discomfort. Jenkins died soon after.

One must wonder, was Jenkins really so oblivious to her lack of talent or was this a narcissistic joke on the public? Kaye is as talented with comedy as with drama and singing; by the end of Souvenir, she has inhabited Florence Foster Jenkins with a warm and sympathetic innocence who insisted, "I only hear the music."

R. Michael Miller designed a refined set that reflects a wealthy New York lady's taste, and Tracy Christensen dressed Kaye in neat, elegant upper-class everyday garb and deliciously outrageous onstage costume, like angel wings for her rendition of, Ave Maria. David Budries provided lighting.

Florence Foster Jenkins -- so bad she's good. That's a cliché that you can't escape with Souvenir at the Lyceum Theatre, performed by a plucky talent, Judy Kaye.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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The Odd Couple - November 2005

Where's the chemistry we've heard about? -- Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick back again to do their Max and Leo magic with Oscar Madison and Felix Unger. That's where the big bucks are going, and that's why over $21,000,000 more big bucks, poured into the Brooks Atkinson Theatre box office before the show even opened. It seems like a no-brainer – a proven team in a proven comedy. For heaven's sake -- it's Neil Simon's, The Odd Couple, a hit play in 1965, a film and a TV series!

Neil Simon's classic is still hours of laughs with enough character sensitivity to give it depth. Who by now doesn't know the travails of sportswriter Oscar Madison (Nathan Lane) and news writer Felix Unger (Matthew Broderick), two straight men, recently divorced, living together with all the hassles of a marriage gone to hell? All the laughs are there, as well as the opportunity for explosion when these two diametrically opposed personalities try to co-exist, first squabbling, then building toward warfare, Oscar the ultra-slob with a quick temper and Felix, an obsessive fuss-budget driven to sanitize Oscar's mess. They drive each other crazy.

The opening scene is priceless; the weekly poker game at Oscar's Riverside Drive apartment. It's six months after Oscar's divorce and the Madison living room is beyond messy. You can smell the cigarette smoke, sense the oppressive July heat with the broken air conditioner silent in the window. There's a dead still-decorated Christmas tree slumped in the corner, and litter wherever it landed. We don't see the kitchen, but someone quips, "I saw milk standing up in the refrigerator that wasn't even in the container."

Although Felix, has not yet arrived, the game begins. The guys eventually learn that Felix was thrown out by his wife and is threatening suicide. When he finally appears at the apartment, Oscar shows enough sentimentality to invite the suffering Felix to stay with him. It's an invitation promising a mix of laughs, and possibly homicide.

In this production, however, the explosive quality is one-sided, and it's all Nathan Lane. From his opening announcement, "I got brown sandwiches and green sandwiches," Lane charges through for almost two and a quarter hours. Matthew Broderick's fussy Felix Unger has little appeal and falls short of the energy needed to hold his own against his co-star. Not only does he invite unfavorable comparisons to his predecessors, but he does not make the role uniquely his own. With his robotic smirk, Broderick is every whiny part he has ever played. He stands with a gawky, stiff posture, delivers lines with unnatural deliberation, and looks too juvenile and wimpy to be invited to join any poker table of gamy old-time New Yorkers.

One well-crafted scene has the duo hosting a get-together with two nubile British sisters, Gwendolyn and Cecily, from an upstairs apartment. Oscar is eager for an evening of dinner and passion; the girls are giggly and ready for a good time. Everything's in place, except Felix, mooning over his wife and children. The tables are turned, however, when Oscar goes in the kitchen and Felix shares his despair with the girls. It's a moment of pre-metrosexual sensitivity. Felix even cries, and back in the '60's men didn't do that. Gwendolyn and Cecily nurturing instincts kick in, and Oscar is left holding his burnt London broil. It's the final straw. War is declared. Felix is tossed out.

This is where Felix has the chance to burst forth with his own energy, but Broderick doesn't pull it off. e gets some la

He has some laughs, clearing his Eustachian tubes, for example, or holding a ladle under Oscar's chin to catch the crumbs, but often Lane's response deflects the moment and makes it his own.

The last scene is another poker game. Felix suddenly returns to the apartment, the sisters with him, to announce that he is getting his things and moving upstairs with them. Bitter irony for Oscar, and a well-written ending.

The supporting players are all first-rate, the poker pals quickly establishing with their own quirky personalities – Brad Garrett as the big gentle cop, Murray; harassed Rob Bartlett (Speed); peevish accountant, Peter Frechette (Roy); and nervous Lee Wilkof as Vinnie.

As the chirpy Pigeon sisters, Olivia d'Abo and Jessica Stone are sparkling potential sex partners with a cute, squirmy appeal.

John Lee Beatty's set tells the story in the first two scenes, Oscar's sloppy apartment contrasted with the same room, now immaculate after Felix moved in and sanitized the place.

Ann Roth designed perfect costumes for mid-century New York City.

Joe Mantello directs the play in two acts, and keeps the laughs buoyant, but wouldn't it have been more interesting to have the Oscar/Felix roles reversed. When Oscar gets spruced up for his date, and Felix looks schlumpy in his shirt-tails, the switch is easy enough to imagine.

If you already bought a ticket for this sold-out limited run, don't scalp it; you'll be in for an entertaining evening. The Odd Couple, while of another era, is not offensively dated and it's worth a rerun anytime.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Naked Girl on the Appian Way - October 2005

The stage setting is spectacular, a house in the Hamptons that few could even afford to visit, much less live in, walled with glass and surrounded by trees. It is obviously not from the local Ethan Allen store, but strictly "IIDA". John Lee Beatty did himself proud with this design.

That’s the best part of Richard Greenberg's A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, a Roundabout Theatre Company production at the American Airlines Theatre.

Families are always a font of drama and comedy, and with this play, Greenberg tosses shovelfuls of dysfunction into this stylized family. As soon as you begin listening to the artificial chit-chat between cookbook writer, Beth Lapin and her perturbed, humanist-businessman husband, Jeffrey, there's such a veneer over the core of these two characters that it's hard to believe or care about what's going to happen to them. The saving grace is that the veneer is comedy with a light hand, except for the one acerbic character, a senile neighbor, Sadie, intelligent but with no connection of discrimination.

Beth, played by Jill Clayburgh, and Jeffrey (Richard Thomas), are proud of their successful lives. Beth stands at her sleek kitchen area chopping vegetables and chatting with Jeffrey. They are waiting for the return of their adopted daughter and son who have been traveling together through Europe. Here is a third son, also adopted, who later drops by. All three kids are intelligent, good-looking and multinational. Juliet (Susan Kelechi Watson) is Dominican. Her brother/traveling companion is er traveling companiooHHGermanic Thad, played with hyperactive athleticism by Matthew Morrison. The third son is Bill, the most intriguing of the offspring, who is Asian and played by James Yaegashi. He is funny in a needy, pouty, bisexual way.

Beth and Jeffrey are liberal parents of 1960's vintage, and so they are supportive of all their children, even when the travelers return with some "icky" news, punched up by a denouement to end the play. In some earlier era, their news would have been shocking, but "icky" is as bad as it gets here. There are two other characters, Elaine (Leslie Ayvasian), a neighbor who wrote a best-selling feminist book 30 years earlier, and Sadie, her nasty mother-in-law who hates everyone, including her late son; she once wrote a book, Against Motherhood. Sadie, played with gusto by Ann Guilbert, is the ginger in this mix of individuals, quoting a lot of uber-intellectual thoughts, as well as calling her daughter-in-law, "Goddam bitch" a few times more than necessary to make the point.

As a study in family dynamics, the play skims lightly, although all the creative elements are in place – bankable director Doug Hughes (Doubt), writer Richard Greenberg (Take Me Out), Clayburgh and Thomas and the others, all actors from film, stage, television. It just doesn't reach down enough. Clayburgh and Thomas play Beth and Jeffrey with reliable aplomb, Clayburgh maternally accepting even of the "icky " factor. Somehow one knows that Jeffrey will come around as well, although another bomb is tossed into the mix just as problem number one is smoothing out.

Doug Hughes directed the play with sleek pacing, but there is not enough in book or characters to work with. Catherine Zuber designed the costumes and John Lee Beatty's set was lighted by Peter Kaczorowsky.

Where does the title come in? While on their tour bus, Juliet and Jeffrey saw a naked girl as they were passing on the Appian Way, just as their parents had seen and photographed, years earlier on their honeymoon. Like the photograph, the stage version of A Naked Girl on the Appian Way is one-dimensional and dated.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams - August 2005

“The Theatre” is a favorite topic for dramatists. It’s the stuff of life. Darken a stage and anything can happen. With this in mind, there’s a sweetness to Terrance McNally’s melodrama about theatre and its importance, or not, in people’s lives, as well as its own self-absorption. It’s all there in the title, Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams. The impact of this love affair between man and art is palpable, including the danger of carrying the dedication and the dreams too far. It can wander down extraneous paths; it can veer into verbosity. Michael Morris, however, keeps a stern hand on the directing rudder and elicits some impelling performances and an endearing quality. At the same time, and despite ominous situations, there is a comedic gloss to the story and its treatment.

Lou Nuncle, played by Nathan Lane, and his wife/partner, Jessie (Alison Fraser) run a small children’s theatre company. It’s a losing proposition, but it is theatre, and the couple is dedicated to the dream-making possibilities for kids. As a birthday surprise for Lou, Jessie persuades wealthy Annabelle Willard, played by magnetic Marian Seldes, to let the couple spend some time in the once grand, now decaying theatre that Willard owns. Lou’s dream would be to restore the space to its former glory and use it for his children’s theatre. Jessie knows that Willard, a dying curmudgeon, has esophageal cancer, and so Jessie lies, telling Willard that Lou suffers from the same disease. He’s perfectly healthy.

Lou and Jessie, with their technical director, Arnold (Michael Countryman), explore the old building. They unearth theatrical treasures from legendary performers and yearn for what seems unattainable, which is for Willard to let them permanently keep the theatre.

During their exploration, they get several drop-in visitors, including Annabelle Willard herself. She and Lou, seated center stage, discuss the theatre, he dedicated to its life-saving potential, and she proclaiming its uselessness since everything leads to death anyway. The old lady is known for her mean eccentricity and in her present condition, is disinterested in the theatre, children or anything else. Regarding conservation, for example, she declares, “'Save the whales? I say eat the whales! What has a whale ever done for me?'' Her only real contact is with her servant (R.E. Rodgers), upon whom she is dependent on for everything, including daily martinis. After a very theatrical interchange with Lou, however, Annabelle agrees to let him have the theatre -- for a price.

Also appearing are Jessie’s resentful daughter, Ida Head, played by Miriam Shor, a punk rock sensation, long estranged from her mother, and her boyfriend, Toby, astutely played by Darren Pettie. The characters all eventually unravel the secrets between them: Jessie and Arnold, Jessie and Lou’s “marriage,” Jessie and Ida, Ida and Toby, and of course, Lou and Annabelle.

The cast is expert. Nathan Lane is neurotic, clever and frustrated; he’s also gay, although he and Jessie have long enjoyed a compatible relationship with the same goals. One the side, she is also enjoying a love affair with stage manager, Arnold. The play, however, sparkles most brilliantly when Marian Seldes is onstage. Crisp and delving, she delivers her lines with easy viciousness, sated with the caustic disregard of the very rich. Lane’s yearning for the old building and Seldes’ fiendish scoffing coating her real despair, is crackling theatre.

Originally intended to open Manhattan Theater Club's Biltmore Theater in 2002, Dedication or The Stuff of Dream was rejected by Lynne Meadow, the MTC’s artistic director.

It’s not a perfect play, but there is enough importance, professionalism, humor, and heart in the show to demand a quality production. With a nostalgic theatre setting by Narelle Sissons, it’s had that chance at Primary Stages.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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The Constant Wife- July 2005

Without skipping a beat, the new 2005-2006 theatre season steps in smoothly just as the previous season eases to a close. Particularly early is the Roundabout Theatre Company, that opens like a pop of champagne with a W. Somerset Maugham showcase for Kate Burton in The Constant Wife at the American Airlines Theatre. Directed by Mark Brokaw, the show, set in upper-class London in the 1920's, certainly looks dated, though it proves to be a sparkling, drawing-room comedy with a contemporary edge and an engaging cast headed by Burton.

Burton plays Constant Middleton, whose husband, John, a successful surgeon, is having an affair with her best friend, the flighty and piquant Marie-Louise (Kathryn Meisle). Before Constance even learns of this liaison, the show opens in the drawing room as her mother, sister and friend await her arrival. Constance's mother,, played with uniquely likeable hauteur by Lynn Redgrave, her sister (Enid Graham), and friend, Barbara (Kathleen McNenny), are squabbling as to how to best alert Constance of this potentially devastating information. As it turns out, when Constance accepts the truth, her reaction is not hysterics or even vapours. She shocks everyone by refusing to humiliate herself, and even denying that she is betrayed at all. Constance says that John has always been generous to her and in return, she is obliged and devoted, but no longer in love with him. She insists that economics, not love, is the bulwark of their marriage. Cheerfully she reworks the situation to her own advantage, stating that the rules are outdated and she will forge her own independence. Constance even creates an excuse for the betraying couple when Marie-Louise's husband shows up with John's cigarette case which was found in his wife's bed.

The stars are aligned for Constance: First, who conveniently shows up at her doorstep but Bernard, an old boyfriend, hardly exciting but useful for her purposes. In addition, another friend urges Constance to accept a well-paying position as a decorator. Therefore, not only does Constance have her own suitor, but also independent financial security. She uses both these well-timed assets, proving, "I am economically independent and therefore I am claiming my sexual independence."

The entire cast admirably portrays the familiar characters playing out the old theme. As Constance's mother (Mrs. Culver), Lyn Redgrave is as caustically sympathetic as she is Victorian-minded, cynically defending the double standard in marriage, stating, "It's their nature." Enid Graham, Constance's sister, Martha, a flinty feminist, is diametrically her mother's opposite. Constance's ardent beau (John Dossett) is somewhat befuddled with all this avant-garde sophistication, and John Ellison Conlee plays Marie-Louise's clueless but affluent husband. Michael Cumpsty as the bourgeois husband hardly seems worth all the trouble. Reaching perfection as the butler is Denis Holmes. The Constant Wife, however, belongs to

Kate Burton, bubbling, yet sharp and witty.

Though draggy in spots, Mark Brokaw keeps Maugham's well-crafted story paced as silky smooth as the drawing room's lacquered Chinoiserie furniture, so popular in the 1920's. Costumes by Michael Krass as lustrous as well as period suitable, especially the sorbet tints worn by Kate Burton.

The Constant Wife was first performed on Broadway in 1926 starring Ethel Barrymore as Constance Middleton, in 1951 with Katharine Cornell, and the last time, thirty years ago, starring Ingrid Bergman. Kate Burton more than holds her own in this latest renaissance of a frothy, but not mindless, production.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story- July 2005

Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story touches brilliance in the category of dark musical drama. Like the best of this genre, the drama does not leave the audience shattered, but thoughtful. Stephen Dolginoff, creator of the book, music, and lyrics has translated a true story into a tight, compelling two-character play and enhances it with a score that is often thrilling. The music does not stand alone but within the frame of the play, it helps colors in the bizarre personalities of the two young men who grew up to commit the “crime of the century.”

The often-told story takes place in 1924 in Chicago, home of two childhood pals, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Stephen Dolginoff chooses to concentrate on only the two young men. He zeroes in on the core of their homosexual love affair, mutual addiction, and their wasted morality and shattered souls. How do these privileged men get so twisted that they kidnap and murder a young boy, Bobby Franks, not for the ransom money but for thrills?

The play opens with Leopold many years later, before a parole board, pleading for his freedom. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, both university students, are brilliant sons of rich respectable Jewish families. They fall in love/need. Leopold is emotionally addicted to the psychotic, flamboyant Loeb. It is Loeb who thinks up the burglaries, arson and finally murder that the young men commit. These crimes sexually arouse Loeb, as he ironically explains with Nothing Like a Fire, sung while the two watch a warehouse burn. The weaker Leopold always goes along with him, as melodically stated in the playful and sensual, A Written Contract.

While Loeb convinces his friend that they can get away with anything because they are superior to ordinary people, it is a surprising carelessness that finally brings them down. The end of this play, which director Michael Rupert keeps tight and well paced without an intermission, reaches edge-of-the-seat riveting, as Leopold erupts with meandering thoughts and memories. Loeb, still feeling superior to his captors, focuses on his future as a lawyer, becoming like Clarence Darrow, who gets them life in prison instead of a death sentence.

Both actors, Matt Bauer as Leopold and Doug Kreeger as Loeb are convincing. Kreeger has the charismatic character of Richard Loeb to work with and he does so compellingly, painting a young man of truly evil and sensuous compulsions. Loeb’s rendition of Roadster, luring the victim into the car and consequently his doom, is ice cold. While we’re never going to like the characters, we do get to understand what rules their horrific actions.

The blackness of the play looms over the small stage, set off with a gray, shadowy set of column and boxes designed by James Morgan and creatively lighted by Thom Weaver. A transparent wall in front sets off additional spaces. Lighting by Thom Weaver is imaginatively noir.

Much of the music is melodic, often romantic; the lyrics tell the story, and since the actors are unplugged, the diction is distinct. The only accompaniment is Eugene Gwozdz on piano.

Thrill Me first premiered at the 2003's Midtown International Theatre Festival, produced by Jim Kierstead, who also presents the current production at the York Theatre Company. The version this reviewer saw in late June starred Doug Kreeger as Loeb with Matt Bauer’s Leopold. Since July, the role of Nathan Leopold has been played by composer Stephen Dolginoff. Beginning Aug. 1, Shonn Wiley takes over the role of Richard Loeb.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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2004 – 2005 SEASON

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?- March 2005

They’re back – George and Martha, those famous co-dependents battling their way through marriage. Kathleen Turner has the role of her life in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Longacre Theatre, and she takes a hefty bite and doesn’t let go. Her worthy adversary, George, is played by Bill Irwin, known to most as a comic actor but in this play, even more than in The Goat, he shows his dramatic chops.

An American classic by Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is enjoying its first Broadway revival in 30 years. While the film and the passing years have blunted its impact, the play remains a powerhouse. Beneath the relationship of Martha and George run currents of 1950’s fear of communism, the chill between the nuclear powers, the debate between art versus science, and the American dream. After Watergate, Vietnam, Iraq, and assassinations, ideals like marriage and the American dream are more illusion than truth, which makes Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? still relevant.

In 1962, the vituperation simmering beneath a marriage was shocking to see and hear the stage; in fact, the Pulitzer Prize jury voted it the most important drama of the year, but the advisory board rescinded the decision and did not award a Pulitzer Prize for drama. Four years later, the intimate nature of the medium of film hurled the play’s intensity in our faces. Today, we see it all on television, an even more intimate medium, and it’s hard to be shocked anymore.

Director Anthony Page precisely focuses on the emotional layers beneath the sharp humor and the vicious but lonely sorrow of Albee’s drama. Almost three hours long, Albee’s aims his sharp dialogue neatly at the target, not a word wasted. George is a burned-out history teacher at a small college in New England. “Good intentions, good, better, best, bested," he says about himself. He’s been married for over 20 years to Martha, the daughter of the college president whom she idolizes but feels she has disappointed. She, in turn, is disappointed in her husband, and craving attention, she is often profane. She quips, "If you existed, I'd divorce you." Nevertheless, they are addicted to each other. Educated and middle-class, each knows how to push the other’s buttons with brilliant effectiveness and trailer trash vehemence. Fixing a drink, he inquires, "Martha, rubbing alcohol for you?" What they can’t resolve, they drown in alcohol and shroud in illusion, most elaborately the creation of a son who never appears but has an almost palpable existence in their lives.

The play takes place in their living room in the early morning hours after a faculty gathering. Over nightcaps, Martha begins baiting George, who methodically unveils his own simmering anger. Visiting them is a young couple, Nick and Honey. Nick is in the biology department, full of confident ambition to get what he wants, anyway he can. Honey is his child-wife who already learned to use brandy for her own support. As Martha baits George and he reacts, Nick and Honey’s individual desires and frustrations emerge and by the end, the facades have been shredded and the underbellies revealed.

Kathleen Turner’s trademark husky voice and assertiveness is a perfect fit for Martha, outrageous yet with a heartbreaking vulnerability in Act III. Bill Irwin lets his inner feelings peel like an onion, every layer as brutal as his wife’s and toward the end he emerges with the winning hand regarding their absent son which was the one link that held them together through the years.

Nick and Honey, played by David Harbour and Mireille Enos, are first intimidated by their ferocious hosts, but their own disillusions surface over the three hours. Enos plays Honey close to a caricature of Sandy Dennis at the start but by the end, she comes into her own.

John Lee Beatty designed a dun colored living room, as joyless as its occupants but a solid background for their colorful battles. Peter Kaczorowski designed nuanced lighting as day breaks.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It’s a simple nursery rhyme spiked with the name of a famous writer consumed with truth and illusion. When George sings the little tune, Martha answers, “I am.” They both gave up on truth years ago, but at the end, all illusions shattered, they have no choice. This is heavyweight theatre, offering as much to chew on today as it did in the early 1960’s.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

Altar Boyz – March 2005

Last year we had Mel Gibson’s film, Passion of the Christ. What an uproar that caused. This year we have Altar Boyz at the Dodger Stages; the only uproar here is the roar of laughter. Praise the Lord.

This is a lighthearted religious send-up of the pop music trend used to advocate religion. There are conceivably those few who might take offence at poking fun at something religious; they probably should not buy a ticket for Altar Boyz. For everyone else, however, the show delivers some rascally takes on bringing in the heathens, using snappy songs performed by the cutest boy band you’ve seen in years. Admittedly, however, it really hasn’t been a good time for boy bands in New York theatre since Forever Plaid.

This hour and half of laughs and songs was conceived by Mark Kessler and Ken Davenport. A skeletal frame of a book by Kevin Del Aguila has a Christian boy band, the “Apostles of Pop,” on tour. The band’s theme states, “…hurtin' or hatin'… leads to Satan,” and Satan is not where they want to go, or where they want you to go. The five boys, you might guess, are named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Juan (yes, that’s right). There is also Abraham. How about that? A Jewish apostle. Who’d have thought?

Staged like a concert, the story has the group winding up their less-than-spectacular national Raise To Praise tour in New York City. Their fans are the audience, and they introduce themselves with, We Are the Altar Boyz -- “We’re gonna alter your mind.” Their goal at each concert is to bring the number of sinners in the audience down to zero. “How many people have God in them?” they ask. Throughout the show the score is tallied on the “Soul Sensor DX12,” which looks like a computerized mini-altar in the corner of the stage. It digitally lights up the number of souls still to be saved. The numbers decrease as they convert the sinners, and there are occasional setbacks since the boyz, of course, have their own sinful baggage as well.

Altar Boyz is a gentle look at a controversial topic. The music by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker, catchy with a spirited rock ‘n roll beat, has a sweet innocence that slices into the hypocrisy of organized religion. The songs tumble one after the other, nothing standout in quality but you’ll hear more clever lyrics and melodies than you would on the Top Ten and even much of Broadway. There are moments to shine for each of the capable performers who are adept singers with soaring voices. They dance athletically and are all good-looking, and each gets his moments to show his stuff.

Scott Porter’s Matthew steps forward as the magnetic leader of the pack; his ballad, Something About You (“You make me want to wait”), is a dreamy message guaranteed to bring on swoons and blushes, especially when he directs the song at a young girl in a front seat. Cool Luke is a street-smart hip-hopper with a mushy core, played by Andy Karl. Ryan Duncan plays an Iglesias-accented orphan searching for his parents – be careful what you wish for, Juan. He delivers some rhythmic salsa in tunes like, La Vida Eternal. David Josefsberg as the Jewish newcomer, has hilarious ironic moments and states his place in the group with, Everybody Fits. Tyler Maynard is the audience pleaser, Mark, not quite out the closet, although there are those telltale signs, especially with that twinkly eye he casts toward hunky Matthew. Mark gets the 11-o’clock accept-yourself, MTV anthem, Epiphany. How his confession turns out is a cute twist.

The voice of God comes from radio personality, Shadoe Stevens.

Anna Louizo designed a spare, hard-edged set, featuring a catwalk. Natasha Katz provides show-biz lighting with rock concert effects, and Gail Brassard dresses each boy with individual flair. Christopher Gattelli choreographed vigorous and imaginative typical rock gyrations and snappy steps. A four-piece band led by Lynne Shankel keeps the beat, with sound design by Simon Matthews that gives the feeling of a rock concert without the need for earplugs. Directed by Stafford Arima, the show whizzes by like an express train right on schedule. While laughs and songs abound, Arima never lessens his focus on the point of the spoof. The last song, I Believe, reflects a touching sincerity and warmth.

Altar Boyz first appeared at the 2004 New York Musical Theater Festival and should settle in here for a healthy run. Why not? The music is lively, these Altar Boyz are talented and having a good time, and so is the audience. Amen to that.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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700 Sundays -February 2005

Some may find that 700 Sundays, Billy Crystal’s look at his childhood through rose-colored glasses, edges over to the sappy side. Sentimental for sure, and even treacle in spots, but 700 Sundays has hit a nerve with theatre goers and Billy Crystal’s "special theatrical event," as the Tony nominating committee decided to categorize it, is the hottest ticket in town.

Smoothly directed by Des McAnuff, 700 Sundays, refers to the approximate number of Sundays he spent with his father who died when Billy was 15. The show about his youth, his family, his life in the suburbs, is actually a two-act play in structure, far from the stand-up routines and Oscar hosting for which Crystal is known. There is a story line enacted before David F. Weiner’s backdrop of a Long Beach, Long Island suburban house, with lighting design by David Lee Cuthbert. The set also acts as a screen for snapshots and his father’s old eight-millimeter home movies that enliven the stories as Crystal shares what growing up was like back in the day and how he became a comic. It’s obvious that he was the family clown, that he found the quirky quality that made certain people unique, and he brings that humor to the stage.

There’s no sensationalism here at all – no falling into drugs, no physical or psychological abuse, no violent trauma to overcome. The ordinariness of it all is what so engulfs the audience: Sunday nights eating Chinese, the old Plymouth, family barbecues, and the familiar losses of life – the sudden death of his father, the unfairness of illness, the heartbreak of high school love, the yearning to make the team and struggling to make ends meet, the eccentric relatives.

Crystal comments, “We all have the same five relatives. They just jump from album to album.''

Occasionally you hear an audience member respond to something as if he were sitting around talking with a friend. That’s sort of the case, except the friend is on stage and doing all the talking.

Crystal’s life had a unique flavor as well -- jazz. Many television viewers know that Crystal has an affinity for jazz but who knew how influential his family, especially his uncle, was? His maternal grandfather owned the Commodore Music Shop on East 42nd Street, and his uncle, Milton Gabler, masterminded the “Commodore” record label and became the producer of such diverse hits as It Takes Two to Tango, Danke Schoen and Rock Around the Clock. Among Commodore’s recordings was Billie Holiday’s ground-breaking social statement, Strange Fruit, first heard at Cafe Society Downtown. Billy’s father, Jack, later managed the Commodore Music Shop, promoted jazz concerts and hosted jam sessions. Jazz was as much a part of Billy Crystal’s life as bagels. Legendary performers nicknamed him, “Face,” and Louis Armstrong was among the many who came to his father’s funeral.

But it is the familiarity that is most engaging. Billy Crystal’s masterful storytelling brings the everyday to life; the Yankee games with his father, how the kids teased his grandfather with the hearing aid, his cigarette-voiced Aunt Sheila and her daughter’s “lesbyterian” wedding, his father – “my first hero” -- and his supportive, loving mother, Helen, who showed incredible courage and strength after her husband’s sudden death. Even if they are too good to be true, it doesn’t matter all that much. It’s a winning story and if it’s not everyone’s life, the sell-out crowds seem to want it to be.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Belfast Blues - January 2005

Many one-person projects are inspired by survival through violent times in turbulent places. Recently, we had Golda’s Balcony based in Israel, and I Am My Own Wife in Nazi and Communist Germany. Now at the Culture Project on Bleeker Street, actress/writer Geraldine Hughes’ absorbing Belfast Blues, set in Northern Ireland, draws from memories of Hughes’ growing up years during “The Troubles” between Catholics and Protestants in the 1970’s and ‘80’s.

Hughes lived with her family in a West Belfast project and later a larger house even closer to most of the fighting. This is a story of poverty clashing against politics, with the ingrained passions of the heart – religion, hope, survival. Geraldine Hughes’ family was poor and could not escape the danger, and so she grew up in a maelstrom of fury, as well as pathos, love, and humor. Belfast Blues is narrated by Hughes as an adult but through a child’s memory bank, without politicizing, just relating the adventures of growing up with violence. She had to learn how to hide from bombs in the closet, share space with rats, and cope with seeing children die and fight before her eyes.

But she also absorbed tradition like her Communion day, when dressed in a special flouncy white dress, Geraldine was to become the bride of God. Swelling with pride, she runs into mishaps, such as the communion wafer. Even after specific directions about the ceremony, she could not get it down and it stuck on the roof of her mouth. There is panic at the altar and irritation at Jesus. Later, preening outdoors in her finery, a neighbor throws water over her and the dress is soaked. Feisty Geraldine lets revenge overpower religious devotion. It is one of the sweetly funny memories.

There was another day when she ate a mouthwatering lunch of fish and chips only to have it end with a neighbor’s violent death before her eyes.

During an hour and a half on stage, Hughes refrains from lecturing motivational style about survival. She sets up a theatrical story with 24 characters including her younger self and brings them to life with wit and empathy, flashing from one to the other without missing a beat. Through swift changes in body language and speech patterns, she evokes her parents, neighbors, and the American director who changed her life when he helped bring her to Hollywood. In the forefront are the parents, her macho father, Eamon, introduced carefully combing his pompadour, and Sheila, her empathetic mother, teasing a high beehive.

“My parents,” Hughes says, “learned their roles well.”

There is Eddie, the grocer, nearsighted and eccentric, and Margaret the activist neighbor, assertive and always with a cigarette, even over an open coffin. Hughes uses her expressive eyes as a form of makeup as she telescopes back through her remembrances, deciphering the values she learned that made her strong enough to return to translate into theatre what she endured in her childhood.

At age 14, Hughes was chosen to appear in a film, Children in the Crossfire, specifically about “The Troubles,” playing a girl much like herself. The time she spent in California opened her eyes to possibilities, and after high school in Belfast, she received a scholarship to leave Ireland and study acting at UCLA. This she accepted only after a heartrending inner struggle and guilt.

Belfast Blues surpasses tragedy through warmth and honesty, always focused on “one wee girl’s story about family, war, Jesus, and Hollywood.” There are documentary slides behind her to help set the scene on Jonathan Christman’s bleak set and lighting design, but Geraldine Hughes herself is the spirited messenger. At the end of her remembrances, you leave the theatre admiring the grit, passion and humor of her characters but probably also brooding the way children are affected by war and how they may react when they grow up.

Belfast Blues premiered to critical acclaim in a small Los Angeles theatre in 2003, and Hughes has taken it to Belfast and London. The production won Geraldine Hughes an L.A. Weekly Award, Ovation Award, and Garland Award.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Democracy - December 2004

It was a popular and critical hit when staged in London last year by the National Theater of Great Britain, but the Broadway run of Democracy at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre brought in mixed reviews. Most agreed, however, that the political drama by Michael Frayn (Copenhagen) under Michael Blakemore’s direction, is a welcome new thought-provoking, multi-layered offering on New York’s current stage. The story centers on West Germany’s Chancellor Willy Brandt and Günter Guillaume, the East German spy who finessed his way into Brandt’s confidence and finally brought him down. The setting is West Germany in the early 1970’s, when the country, according to Frayn, was like ''eleven separate democracies tied up in a federation like ferrets in a bag.''

Central in the play is Günter Guillaume maneuvering his way into Brandt’s inner circle in the Palais Schaumburg even as Brandt openly disliked him. The obsequious Guillaume (“the hat stand in the corner”) slyly observed Brandt’s policy-making, particularly regarding East Germany, Brandt’s moods, his womanizing and reported back to his East German superior, Arno Kretschmann. When Guillaume’s dual-role was uncovered, Brandt’s tenure was over. The complications rise from the intertwining personal connections between Brandt and Guillaume, the machinations of the political hacks around Brandt, and the slip and slide of democracy itself..

Despite a theme of political intrigue and colorful divided personalities, the kaleidoscope of ambiguities was somewhat diluted when Democracy moved to New York. While there may be less interest in the subject of German politics here, the main problem lies in the casting of the larger-than-life, womanizing, brilliant Willy Brandt. He was a member of the Socialist Workers Party, fled to Norway until Hitler invaded and then to Sweden. Like Guillaume, he also was involved in espionage during the war. Later, back in Germany, he settled with the Social Democrats and rose to Chancellor from 1969 to 1974, a charismatic figure who could inspire the masses in his resolve to open relations with East Germany and with the Soviet Union. In 1971, Brandt won the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s difficult to discern this magnetic Willy Brandt in James Naughton’s detached steel gray portrayal, projecting none of the appeal of the German leader, despite his intriguing story and Blakemore’s smooth direction.

The audience closely watches Brandt through the eyes and ears of the spy, Günter Guillaume, played by Richard Thomas who expresses the divided loyalties with confidence, obsequious around Brandt, tortured in himself, a good soldier under his East German superior, Arno Kretschmann played solidly by Michael Cumpsky. Guillaume’s relationship with Cumpsky serves to move the story along and keep the supporting characters straight.

The supporting cast, in their roles as Brandt’s associates, is first-rate though often indistinguishable from each other as each is slithery and self-protective, wary of Guillaume’s growing closeness to Brandt and watching their own positions. Julian Gamble plays Brandt’s bodyguard who sees everything. Robert Prosky portrays the wily Herbert Wehner, maneuvering in vain against Helmut Schmidt (John Dossett) to become Brandt’s successor. Richard Masur is Horst Ehmke.

Peter J. Davison provided a two-tiered set with cubicles holding colored folders, later used for dramatic effect, helped by Neil Alexander’s sound effects and Mark Henderson’s lighting.

According to Michael Frayne, Democracy is about the complexities of human arrangements. Despite a detached leading man, Frayn succeeds in boiling political intricacies down to a personal drama, still leaving the audience uncomfortable with the realization about the ironic, slippery ideal of democracy.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Twelve Angry Men - November 2004

In a world of Court TV, Law and Order and all its offshoots, how relevant can a 50-year-old play about the legal system be? What more can Twelve Angry Men offer us; we’ve seen it all played out in media trials, real and fictional? It takes place in one jury room, after what looks like an open-and-shut murder case; 11 out of 12 jurors are ready to hand in a guilty verdict and go home. Can it be worth another visit?

It can. The Roundtable Theatre Company’s production of Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men, directed with compelling authority by Scott Ellis is currently featured at the American Airlines Theatre, roughly an hour and a half of building tension and satisfying characterizations with no intermission to crack the momentum. A solid ensemble cast tears apart the concept of reasonable doubt, and not surprisingly, puts it together again.

The case involves a teenager accused of murdering his combative father. He claims innocence, saying he was at the movies. He has, however, no alibi and can’t remember what movie he saw. There are witnesses, somewhat dubious: A woman who lives on the other side of the subway elevated tracks says she saw the stabbing through the subway windows, and a neighbor living in the same building as the teenager says he saw the boy running away after the event.

Eleven jurors immediately vote to convict. The holdout is played by Boyd Gaines. He is not sure if the teenager is guilty or innocent, but he thinks they should discuss it. As the other jurors, with their own agendas, argue against him or align themselves with him, the system itself is held up for examination. How reasonable is the doubt? How often do we judge on face value? Was there substantial reason for the murder? What are the underlying reasons for each juror’s decision?

The characters represent certain types and each is known only by his jury number. Gaines’ character is reasonable but tenacious in his stand. Philip Bosco is outstanding as the bellicose bigot who eventually reveals his difficult relationship with his own son. John Pankow is a baseball fanatic; James Rebhorn tries to keep a rein on the proceedings; Tom Aldridge is vulnerable as an old man and Adam Trese is just starting his advertising career. These and the other jurors played by Larry Bryggman, Robert Clohessy, Kevin Geer, Peter Friedman, Mark Blum and Michael Mastro each have room to round out their personalities.

Allen Moyer created a functional jury room set, the wood furniture indicative of an era before plastic table and chairs, the open windows and water fountain indicative of no air conditioning in summer. Michael Krass dressed the men in loose fitting 50’s sports jackets, seersucker suits and casual sports shirts. The look is of a certain age, a time where it was not unusual to see a jury of only white men.

Twelve Angry Men was first performed on television’s CBS Studio One in 1954. In 1957 it became a film starring Henry Fonda and directed by Sidney Lumet, and 40 years later, it was remade for television starring Jack Lemmon. The Roundabout production is the first on Broadway .

While the theme seems straightforward, the underlying turmoil driving each man bubbles quickly to the surface, letting the play evolve into a vehicle with relevance for the millennium era just as it had in Eisenhower’s time.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Guantánamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom – November 2004

Guantánamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom at 45 Bleecker, packs a wallop to those who listen, even as news from the International Committee of the Red Cross confirms confidential reports to the United States government indicating that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. They describe the physical coercion as, "tantamount to torture." This applies to prisoners who have no recourse to legal rights, which is what this play is about.

Guantánamo was first produced in London from material gathered by journalist Victoria Britain and writer Gillian Slovo. The material contains testimony of British detainees in Cuba and their family members. While these detainees were often charged with no crime, they could be held in the U.S. camp indefinitely; their stories are delivered through the experiences of several families. Featured also are two political leaders, both played by Robert Langdon Lloyd -- Lord Steyn, who had already publicized the activities in Cuba, and a blustering Donald Rumsfeld, who denies the illegality, claiming that here is a difference between the necessary treatment due “detainees” and “prisoners of war.” In minor parts are Kathleen Chalfant as lawyer, Gareth Peirce, and Waleed Zuaiter as American Major Dan Mori.

Most telling, however, are the personal stories brought to life by an outstanding ensemble team of actors who portray their frustration, anger, hope, resignation, all using little movement. Maulik Pancholy plays Ruhel Ahmed, a young man accused of terrorist activities. He was arrested and later released, having lost his eyesight because he could not get the necessary contact lenses.

An English Muslim, Begg, (Harsh Nayyar), pleads for his son, Moazzam (Aasif Mandvi), who was arrested when he went to Afghanistan on n humanitarian mission and was then imprisoned in Guantanamo where he remains.

Wahab al-Rawi, played by Ramsey Faragallah, is an Iraqi born English citizen who went to Africa with his brother, Bisher (Waleed Zuaiter) to set up a business, and there they were detained; first they were wrongfully accused of terrorist training, and later for a terrorist attack. There was no concrete evidence, and Wahab was finally released, but Bisher went to Guantanamo because he had learned how to fly small planes. There is still nothing linking him to terrorists.

The play’s point of view is, guilty or not, there is no due process, no civil rights, no adhering to the Geneva Convention. Most alarming is how this plays against our American traditions. As we send “freedom and democracy” to Iraq, we feel free to deny others these elements. It is not stretching the fact to realize that our own citizens could also be denied civil liberties at the whim of the current regime and this, in fact, has already happened to political protesters.

Directed by Nicolas Kent and Sacha Wares, the show is occasionally wordy, slowing the pace down, and the slant is not even handed, but the stories are riveting and the message disturbing. The staging of Guantánamo is starkly dramatic, with actors already in their places as inmates, when the theatre opens. In cages along each side, or on beds and chairs in the center marking off small spaces, they are praying, sleeping or sitting. Even during intermission, the actors remain onstage, and as the audience leaves the theatre, the actors, portraying the prisoners, still remain behind.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Reckless – October 2004

Mary Louise Parker, a beguiling actress whose quirky vulnerability captivates her audience, delivers another whimsical performance in Craig Lucas’ offbeat fable, Reckless, which opened on October 14 at the Biltmore Theatre. Parker plays Rachel, a chirpy suburban housewife sitting happily in bed with her husband on Christmas Eve. Outside, the snow is falling softly and the world is peaceful. But not for long. Suddenly sobbing, her husband blurts out that he has taken out a contract on her life and the hit man is downstairs right now. After all of Rachel’s holiday preparations, death is what she is going to get? How fair is that?

Rachel has no choice. Dressed only in a nightie and fuzzy slippers, she slips out through the bay window and runs into the snow, the start of a bizarre adventure. She gets to a phone booth and calls her neighbors for help, but they don’t believe her flaky story. Is this all a nightmare or horribly real?

Lloyd, a physical therapist, comes to her rescue. He brings her home to Springfield and his wife, Pooty, a deaf-mute paraplegic. Rachel learns that things, are not as they seem: Everyone has a past, and Lloyd poses a new question – Is the past something you wake up to, or is it, as Rachel believes, something you wake up from? "Do you think we ever really know people?" she wonders.

She settles in with this new family, finds a job at a humanitarian group, Hands Across the Sea, and appears on a game show, Your Wife or Your Mother, with Lloyd and Pooty. Another Christmas comes and ends tragically, sending Lloyd and Rachel on the run, stopping to rest in various other Springfields around the country. Life is reckless, things happen, and who can explain them?

At the end the puzzle pieces neatly fall neatly into place. Rachel faces reality and finally settles down in the place she has always dreamed of. You can decide whether she’s waking up from the past, or to the past. Or both. It’s not the funniest play in the world, nor the most soul-searching, but there is a message of self-awareness, of the reality of life, and of resiliency.

Directed by Mark Brokow, the tale’s focus is through a len darkly, settling on the bleak edge of humor, comic and tender at the same time. This is largely because of Parker’s screwy lovableness as she bounces from one situation to another, thanks to Brokow’s brisk pacing. Eternally sunny and optimistic, almost to the rim of delusion, she is surrounded by a cast that smoothly serves the zany plot. Thomas Sadoski plays her misguided husband, Tom, and Michael O’Keefe morphs into alcoholism as the layers of his past and present overwrite his future. Rosie Perez as his wife, Pooty, beams a twinkling, deceptive personality. Debra Monk is outstanding playing a versatile lineup of shrinks, as Olga Merediz and Jeremy Shamos energetically throw themselves into various roles.

Allen Moyer's clever, but minimalist set design seems more suited to an off-Broadway house than within the elegant restored Biltmore Theatre.

Reckless originated in 1983 and was revived five years later off-Broadway at the Circle Rep. The current version is revived at the Biltmore by Manhattan Theatre Club and Second Stage Theatre.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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Marc Salem’s Mind Games On Broadway- Sept. 2004
“Nothing that I do is supernatural," says Marc Salem, a genial, soft-spoken, portly, balding man in a dark suit and a dry wit. While he doesn’t sing, dance or act in his one-man show on Monday evenings at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, he sure keeps his audience shaking their heads in amazement and wondering, “How does he do that?”

Salem doesn’t really read minds, he says, but he sure fools everyone into thinking he does with stunts like getting two audience members to come onstage, secure half-dollars against his eyes with layers of surgical tape and blindfold him with a black scarf. Then he begins the implausible, like floating his hand over a dollar bill and reciting the numbers on the bill.

While amazing viewers with onstage mind-readings, Salem suddenly turns toward one area of the audience to call out a name and guess where the subject spent his vacation. He stops a wristwatch and starts it again; he has a physician take his pulse while he speeds it up, slows it down, and stops and starts it again.

Whatever mind games he is indulging in, they are performed so slickly, with charm and humor, so that even a most dogged sceptic must be impressed.

Salem is an authority on non-verbal communication. Without smoke and mirrors, without sidekicks set up in the audience, he promises that no one will be humiliated and brings up participants for situations that he will puncture with some mind-blowing, on-the-spot revelation.

“I’m just warming up,” Salem remarks early on, as he runs through several situations of guessing numbers and names. He asks if there is a teacher in the room, admittedly a high probability, whom he brings on the stage to randomly choose words from a randomly chosen book. He then discerns the words she chose, as well as words selected haphazardly by others in the audience.

In one situation, he has several audience members draw pictures and then deny that they drew them when he asks. As Salem guesses who drew what, he offers how one can discern who is lying.

His games become progressively more intricate until by the end – blindfolded and touching nothing – he guesses objects sent up from the audience; sunglasses, keychain, an umbrella, a cell phone, including its brand.

While Salem says he is doing nothing supernatural or occult, he slyly adds, “or almost nothing.” He admits to having had a heightened sensitivity since childhood. He taught psychology in college and in the 80’s, he worked on Children's Television Workshop’s Sesame Street as a research director, concentrating on the mind and how it develops and creates reality. He works with lawyers on jury selection and with police, training them in nonverbal communication. His book, Mind Tools, will be published next year by Simon and Schuster.

Mind Games has toured around the country and the world, was featured at Feinstein’s at the Regency, and appeared off-Broadway before moving to Broadway’s Lyceum in May, where it sparkles on the evenings most Broadway theatres are dark. Audience members leave commenting with words like, “astounding” and “awesome.” Let’s add to that, “It’s fun.”

Elizabeth Ahlfors

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© 2008 Elizabeth Ahlfors. All rights reserved worldwide.