Off-Broadway: In the Summer Pavilion

Early on, the bare stage of Pavilion
evokes a more primal style;
later, it's simply dull & barren
(photo: Gerry Goodstein)

In the Summer Pavilion

Workshop Theater Company at 59E59

written by Paul David Young

directed by Kathy Gail MacGowan

October 17, 2012

An earnest, dull drama about the sundering of a youthful menage a trois. A frisky bacchanal in the titular gazebo segues to an ominous void, from which the protagonist―a melodramatically moody Princetonian―will visit his potential futures. This first “act” of the 75-minute drama has a primal sense of mystery that weirdly echoes late Greek drama like Oedipus at Colonus. But the show doesn't follow through on its initial prophetic promise. Instead, Pavilion cuts together a montage of the trio, ten years on, in permutations of coupledom and solitude. The performers show some green talent; the director and designers adroitly define a new setting every ten minutes. But the script's scenarios are limited to the near-utopian reality of the 1%. No matter how happy or un- they are, these kids will become international art dealers and high financiers. In the worst case, our Ivy grad kicks heroin to join an all-American terrorist cell. It's a preposterous caricature of Occupy as Weathermen 2.0! The woman, for her part, always gets paired off with one man or the other―so much for the future of feminism. Finally, the play repeats its opening. But the scenes that were incantory now seem like an empty gesture at the cyclical nature of something or other.

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In the Summer Pavilion plays at 59E59, closing on November 3. Tickets?

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Sci-Fi Theater: Heresy

Nearly alone in this show,
Reg Cathay doesn't phone his performance in

Heresy

The Flea Theater

written by A.R. Gurney

directed by Jim Simpson

It's a measure of sci-fi's ubiquity in American theater that even A.R. Gurney, an 82-year-old WASP, sets his latest drama in a dystopia. It's “New America” in the not-too-distant future, just long enough for five nation-wide “crackdowns” on un-American activity. The image that conjures—of NYPD bashing Occupy—is the only contemporary aspect of Gurney's setting. His targets are Bush-era: waterboarding, wiretaps, and massive databases on American citizenry get cited but not, say, drone assassination. Not a word about the Great Recession but plenty about a newfound unity of church and state. The near-absence of post-'08 malfeasance makes the play seem behind the times, already dated. The near-future resembles the near-past, but with a paranoid streak stemming from constant police surveillance. The lone bit of future-tech is a whooshing door out of BBC's MI-5.

If Heresy were stronger elsewhere, in script or show, Gurney's failure of imagination wouldn't matter so much. But the play is clumsy, its staging uninspired. Its basic conceit is awful: Mary (Annette O'Toole, wooden) visits DC to speak with Pilate about the arrest of her son, Chris. In case his audience misses his point, Gurney hamhandedly emphasizes the parallel: young officer Mark, transcribing the meeting, likes to re-translate prosaic dialogue back into its biblical phraseology. Jim Simpson ignores the script's blunt-edged satire, instead staging the play with a breezy tone. The flickers of enjoyment come from the always-awesome Reg E. Cathay, a Pilate whose bass voice belies a shallow desire for respect, and by Kathy Najimy as his tipsy wife, a society matron who says the dopiest things. The duo's rapport gives this doddering one-act its only moments of vitality.

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Heresy plays at the Flea Theater, closing on November 4. Tickets?

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Off-Broadway: Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812

Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812

Ars Nova

written and composed by Dave Molloy

directed by Rachel Chavkin

Monday, Oct. 15

Ars Nova: better than BAM and a quarter the cost. This month, the space in Hell's Kitchen hosts a chamber opera by the gifted Dave Molloy. He's set roughly 75 pages of War & Peace to 150 minutes of modernist music―a pomo polyglot of cellos, bass sax, drum loops, and accordions. That scenario could be abrasive, but Molloy, director Rachel Chavkin, and Ars Nova deliver instead a warm, immersive evening. The cozy theater has been converted into a 21C version of a Moscow salon, welcoming audiences with free vodka and black bread. Molloy embodies this generosity by taking the role of Pierre, one of Tolstoy's central characters, a Muscovite with a large heart and unhappy marriage. The character, in turn, represents part of Tolstoy's own artistic spirit: objective yet passionate, and possessed of a judiciously moral voice.

The show draws a slice from midway through the long novel, a brief but catastrophic debut of Pierre's friend Natasha into society and his attempt to salvage her reputation. After he's brought her a modest crumb of comfort, he spots that titular comet in the Russian night and has a moment of cosmic awareness. To reproduce the novel's intimate yet epic voice, Molloy employs a stylistic pastiche and shifts of tone and perspective. Aside from his Pierre, the minor role of Natasha's confidante offers the most “Tolstoyan” moment. As Sonya, Brittain Ashford possesses incredible emotional and tonal range as well as the slightest lisp, which lends specificity to her heart-heavy solo in act 2. Though each act has its slow stretches, it compensates with invaluable moments like this one. Theater of grandeur on a small stage, this show feels somehow indispensible to the artistic life of 2012.

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Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812 plays at Ars Nova, closing on Nov. 10. Tickets?

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Broadway: An Enemy of the People

Only Michael Siberry (right), as decadent dad-in-law,
points the way to a new Ibsenesque,
an irrealism haunted by David Lynch hobgoblins 

An Enemy of the People

MTC at the Friedman Theater

written by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Rebecca Lenkiewicz

directed by Doug Hughes

seen on September 28, 2012

A town's livelihood depends on its new spa, so it attacks a local doctor for proving that the cheap & dirty construction will spread disease, not cure it. Timed to coincide with the 2012 election, this revival of Ibsen's 1882 work finds its energy in condemning the know-nothing townspeople. Parallels to the Republican party draw themselves, of course. Adaptor Lenkiewicz polishes the play up with pithy dialogue and canny use of English idioms but she also cuts the protagonist's mulishness. Hughes follows her lead by directing a show that's light on subtext and heavy on rabble-rousing speechifying. Boyd Gaines, as the doctor, provides some depth, allowing himself to appear ridiculous by plumbing his middle-aged character's naïvety. MTC's impulse to stage Ibsen may be socially liberal but its aesthetics are too conservative to produce anything but easily-digestible melodrama. This Enemy's irony is that it's a safe crowd-pleaser about the wrongness of that approach in life, politics, and art.

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An Enemy of the People runs through November 11. Tickets?

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Off-Broadway: If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet

If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet

Roundabout at the Steinberg Center

written by Nick Payne

directed by Michael Longhurst

Thursday, Sept. 27

British director Michael Longhurst and designer Beowulf Borritt have placed a neat junkpile centerstage for If There Is…. To define a scene's location, the actors pull a fridge, a TV, or a bike from the pile. Scene over, the furniture gets shoved into a water tank at the footlights. It's all part of the consumer culture that's clogging up the environment, and also part of the mess that the play's characters have made for themselves. For If There Is… is another drama where a feckless relative visits a stressed-out family to egg along the crisis.

Cast in that catalytic role, film actor Jake Gyllenhaal takes the Brando approach to stagework, disappearing fully into the part by burying himself under fussy, tic-filled physicality. In response, the rest of the cast gives Kim Hunter-like performances, quieter but stronger and more subtle. Their psychological realism lends substance to the underwritten characters. The effectiveness of the production almost masks the conventions of the script. But If There Is… is the same realistic, episodic family drama that Off-Broadway companies always produce.

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If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet plays at the Steinberg Center, closing on November 25. Tickets?

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Off-Broadway: Job

Job

The Bats at the Flea Theater

written by Thomas Bradshaw

directed by Benjamin Kamine

Sept. 22, 2012

Thomas Bradshaw, always provocative, has never been so bold as he is here, in his adaptation of Job. The biblical book tackles the cause of suffering, depicting a seemingly heartless wager between God and Satan over the strength of Job's faith. When pressed to account for Job's suffering, God refuses: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the Earth?” Without losing any of the tragic amplitude of the original, Bradshaw turns this into a radical commentary on authority. Job, a successful owner of livestock, sits in judgment over a small fiefdom, mercifully adopting victims of rape and, more disturbingly, be-handing thieves. This mortal world is all bushy beards, animal sacrifices, and declamations in a pseudo-Biblical style. Heaven is superficially different―pressed khakis, wine glasses served on trays, and genial conversation―but its God is just as stern when He delivers His verdicts.

In past shows, Bradshaw has staged explicit and often violent sexual acts, seeming simply to enjoy provoking audiences. But in Job, these horrific acts purposefully underscore the fraught nature of human existence. Castration and necrophilic rape suggest that Bradshaw is personally horrified by (and drawn to) sexual degredation as a dramatic tool, though he also engages the tragic tradition of blinding as the ultimate metaphor for suffering. But Job's suffering, when it occurs, is neither tragic nor heroic, it's just pathetic. As his life becomes unbearable, he laments in plaintive tones that distract God from His silent meditation practice. To end the distraction, God descends from Heaven for His empty self-justification. Job's body, property, and status restored, he returns to ordering amputations.

A casual reading of Job easily sets it up as an allegory for the '07-08 economic catastrophe. Wall Street (Job) is hobbled but, once bailed out by the Government,  returns to its merciless behavior. Common humanity is unchanged throughout: hungry, violent, and fearful. Bradshaw's previous shows have presented a satiric worldview, which would reinforce this reading. But the difference with Job is that Bradshaw seems to believe that hierarchy is fixed and authority is inevitable as well as selfish. Maybe that view stems from the source material, but Bradshaw hasn't altered or subverted it. The show's only irony (though it's a deep one) is a tragic fear for physical frailty and a tragic pity for the exploited. That would seem to be Bradshaw's own position, since it doesn't correspond either to God or Job.

Benjamin Kamine's production of Bradshaw's script pads its runtime to 60 minutes by staging some exhilarating primitive Orientalist dances as well as horrific dumbshows of rape and murder. The Biblical atmosphere is richly evoked, Cecil B. DeMille by way of Peter Brook (if you can imagine that). In the title role, Sean McIntyre uses a deep baritone to stentorian effect, and plays smartly in a flat, Brechtian style that fits the play well. As God, Ugo Chukwu is smooth and casual, a being used to ultimate power. But his earthly manifestation at the show's climax is the evening's own tragic flaw. The problem partly is the costume, an unimposing mask and cloak, and partly Chukwu's voice, which lacks the raw vigor of divinity speaking from the whirlwind. It's a gravely disappointing moment, but Bradshaw's play has enough strength and depth to overcome this.

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Job plays at the Flea Theater, closing on October 7. Tickets?

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Theater: New Shows (Sept. 25 - Oct. 1)

Ars Nova will be transformed
into a Russian salon not unlike this one.
Dress accordingly.

The stages are revving up for the autumn season. So with plenty to choose from, I'll shine the spotlight this week on Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. That's a fantastic title. Tasha & Pete are two protagonists of War and Peace, Tolstoy's epic about Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia. This show adapts a small, lovely segment of the novel into a pocket-opera that fuses Russian folk and classic music with “electro-pop” music. The staging, by the sharp Rachel Chavkin, promises to turn Ars Nova into a Moscow salon, its tables set with vodka and dumplings! Imaginative, theatrical, and forward-looking, this sounds like a cool evening.

Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 

where: Ars Nova

first night: Monday, Oct. 1

And here's the rest of the week's new shows:

Don't Go Gentle

where: MCC at the Lortel Theater

first night: Thursday, Sept. 27

Judicial conservativism seems like a great subject for modern American dramatists, but DGG is the first play I've come across about the movement. Michael Cristofer (Intelligent Homosexual's Guide…) plays a right-wing justice whose pro bono work leads to conflict, internal and external.

Falling

where: Minetta Lane Theater

first night: Thursday, Sept. 27

An autistic teen gets thrown out of his rhythm when an estranged relative visits. That sounds formulaic, so let's hope the Midwestern creators (writer Deanna Jent and director Lori Adams, both unknown to me) devise new theatrical tools to get the audience into the strange mind of the protagonist.

Heresy

where:  The Flea Theater

first night: Saturday, Sept. 29

A.R. Gurney in realistic mode bores me silly, but when he gets theatrical and political he gets my attention. Heresy is him in the latter manner, adapting a passion play for election season. Mary and Joe visit Homeland Security to learn from Pontius Pilate (Reg E. Cathey, always good) why their son Chris has been arrested.

Him

where: Primary Stages at 59E59

first night: Tuesday, Sept. 25

A dishwater drama about a small-business inheritance to be split between siblings. The script is by Hallie Foote, who mines the same Last Picture Show milieu as her late father Horton. Their quirky, quotidian realism has come into fashion in the last decade, though I can't see why.

Motherboard

where: The Secret Theater

first night: Friday, Sept. 28

Four magic words: “After the robot uprising…” LIC's Secret Theater has become The Place for science fiction onstage. The venue's latest follows a nanny-bot across a post-apocalyptic world of the 25C, after humanity quashed the robo-revolution. See you there?

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

where: Broadway (Booth Theater)

first night: Thursday, Sept. 27

Albee's alcohol-soaked masterwork just played a stupendous run in '05 but it's good enough to stand another viewing. This Steppenwolf production got hossanahs a few seasons ago; with Pam McKinnon (Clybourne Park) directing Tracy Letts and Amy Morton, it's not hard to guess why. This is only Letts' second NYC stage appearance, tho' his scripts (like August: Osage County, which earned Morton a Tony nom) have made his reputation rock-solid.

Last chance!

Bullet for Adolf

where: New World Stages

my review

Fly Me to the Moon

where: 59E59

Heartless

where: Signature Theater

Us

where: Theater Row