The Edinburgh Fringe in August, the largest theater festival in the world, presents hundreds of plays as well as musicals, dance, comedy, cabaret and spoken word performances.
I chose political plays, and nine out of ten I saw were excellent. I divided them into three groups, repression, war and politics. Here‘s the second group, about war. “The Bunker Trilogy” and “Private Peaceful” about World War I and “The Collector” about more organized cruelty in Abu Graib.
The Edinburgh Fringe in August is the largest theater festival in the world, with hundreds of plays as well as musicals, dance, comedy, cabaret and spoken word performances.
I chose political plays, and nine out of ten I saw were excellent. I divided them into three groups, repression, war and politics. Here‘s the first group, about repression.
These riveting plays dealt with periods centuries apart. They are “A Players Advice to Shakespeare” set in the 1600s, and two mirror plays of the 20th century, “Animal Farm” in Stalinist Russia and “Chaplin” in McCarthyite 1950s America. In each case, the playwrights and actors bring out the psychology of repression and rebellion.
“Violet” is like an expressionist painting with brush-stroked characters. We see the visual depth of the central character (Sutton Foster), and the others that interact with her add bits of color.
It is a picture with sound. The production by Brian Crawley (book and lyrics) and Jeanine Tesori (music) is a chamber operetta, with Foster‘s strong, rich voice underpinned by deep sweetness. The score moves through a terrific panoply of southern music, from country in Nashville, to blues in Memphis and gospel in Tulsa.
John Steinbeck‘s play, which he adapted from his novel, is a poignant narrative about human connections among people leading lives of what is wont to be called quiet desperation.
Sensitively directed by Anna Shapiro, it tells the story of George (James Franco), a California ranch worker who in the Depression has hooked up with Lennie (Chris O‘Dowd) a mentally retarded fellow who is too strong for his own good. They work as itinerants on farms and ranches. They stay together out of undefined affection that defeats the loneliness that would otherwise engulf them. (It was first produced on Broadway in 1937.)
Gerard Alessandrini is the best musical theater critic in New York. Incisive, clever, right on the mark. And he does it in the idiom of the productions he critiques!
By now, everybody knows that since 1982, Alessandrini has produced nearly yearly revues that satirize Broadway musicals. He does it with a cast of four performers, different ones through the decades, whose voices are as good or better than most of what you find on Broadway. The numbers are enhanced by brilliant costume and wig designers. And by David Caldwell on piano.
The stone-faced women who anchor this play are as flinty as the rocks that litter the landscape and pile up to create the rough walls of people‘s houses. The young, tough, fierce, violent Helen (the excellent Sarah Greene) tells of being groped by a priest. She kills a duck and a cat on order; she smashes eggs on the head of her brother Bartley (Conor MacNeill).
Faces appear in permanent frowns. Where the climate and scenery is harsh, so are the relations between people. But curiously all of them have a warmth they do their best to hide and which playwright Martin Donagh pulls inevitably out. A hidden sympathy and compassion.
It‘s a dark comic look at the cruelty and caring that exist side by side in barren seaside place in Ireland.
There‘s nothing like providing a sense of place by starting out a play in Italian when the director has set it in Sicily. Don‘t worry, the dialogue switches to Shakespeare‘s English soon enough. But Jack O‘Brien‘s touches do a lot to mix fantasy with reality. Like the vegetable garden where Beatrice (Lilly Rabe) and Benedick (Hamish Linklater) meet. And where he picks a carrot to munch on. (And there are some nice looking tomatoes.)
There is also a stone villa that belongs to Leonato (John Glover), the governor of Messina, circa 1900, with an orange tree and white wrought iron tables and chairs. As the Delacorte stage is in the middle of Central Park, the set blends in nicely.
There‘s nobody better than the Brits to do plays about class. And in this case, also male/female. Ayckbourn, who is 77, gets it. I think he always has.
These three very different plays at 59E59 Theaters all deal with personal crises, but do them as a thriller, a melodrama and a farce. Not bad. And they use Ayckbourn‘s theatrical tricks to do reversal/mirror image and time shifts. We see things happening from different viewpoints and in different times. And we have the good fortune that the plays are directed by the master himself, with just the right bits of sorrow, tragedy, comedy, silliness.
In Arrivals and Departures, the most powerful play, Ez (a terrific Elizabeth Boag), is a soldier assigned to protect Barry (also brilliantly played by Kim Wall), a provincial traffic warden who has been brought to London to identify a terrorist who is expected to arrive at the train station.
“If/Then” (book & lyrics by Brian Yorkey) takes up life‘s “fork-in-the-road” problem. What if a person takes this job instead of another, goes out with this guy instead of another, gets married or doesn‘t.
Elizabeth (Idina Menzel) 38, an urban planner, is the subject of this non-scientific experiment, or fantasy. Menzel is a fine performer, with presence and pizazz, if a little loud in the vocal department. She is unfortunately burdened with a confusing, let‘s-put-in-the-kitchen-sink plot.
This is a gorgeous, moving play by Terry Teachout, who we know as the theater critic for the Wall Street Journal, but who is obviously a cut above most of the playwrights he reviews.
It‘s helped, of course, by the brilliant performance of John Douglas Thompson, an accomplished Shakespearean actor. Thompson is known for a memorable Othello as well as the title character of Eugene O‘Neill‘s “Emperor Jones.”
Thompson plays two characters, the performer Louis Armstrong and his agent, Joe Glaser. Armstrong, like Thompson, of course is black. Glaser is Jewish. Thompson shifts seamlessly between the two. Thompson does a great tough New York-accented Glaser.
The story moves back in time from 1971 when Armstrong is waiting in his dressing room to go on at the Waldorf in New York. The dressing room has bright light bulbs and a large recorder. But it‘s not a musical play. It‘s a drama about a gifted musician who had to maneuver through the world of segregation and racism.
Ionesco‘s absurdist satire is a vivid dark commentary on the popular refusal to acknowledge the horrors of the rise of Naziism. And the belief of some Germans that Hitler was ushering in an era of shining, sparkling glory. They could ignore that some people were disappearing, perhaps murdered.
Director Darko Tresnjak staging is part straight, part bizarre, to make every line resonate in contemporary reality.
Desperate, full of hope and dreams, wracked by despair, succored by religion, the members of the Younger family spill their humanity in various ways in Lorraine Hansberry‘s 1959 play about a black family‘s struggle. The work is based on the experience of her own family, who moved to a white Chicago neighborhood, was attacked by neighbors, and won a 1940 Supreme Court decision ruling restrictive covenants – agreements not to rent to blacks – illegal.
Kenny Leon‘s smart direction elevates to realism what might have been sentimentality and melodrama. The story is gripping and richly presented.
It starts in a Georgetown drawing room. Now you already know half the juicy story by Anthony Giardina, presented by Lincoln Center Theater. It‘s Washington politics. Insider stuff. In this case, as usual, a conflict between liberals and conservatives. With a little morality thrown in. You know which ones are moral and which are opportunists, right? (They say that liberals become playwrights and conservatives become bankers.)
Giardina‘s play, directed with panache by Doug Hughes, is a very clever and entertaining take on dealing in Washington over the decades from Jimmy Carter to the inauguration of Barak Obama. With a family drama to tie up the loose ends. Accomplished director Hughes keeps it this side of TV drama, of which there are now several of the genre.
Robert Schenkkan has written a drama that should be performed in every city, every school and college in America. This play is both a stunning history lesson and a thrilling reenactment of one of the most exciting and important moments of recent American history. It‘s the struggle to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 at the moment when the civil rights struggle was roiling the south and capturing international headlines.
The flawed hero of the drama is President Lyndon Johnson – LBJ – whose re-election slogan was “All the Way with LBJ.” The time was 50 years ago, and a lot of people who see the play and read this review may have only a vague memory of that time. It was vivid to me. I had just returned from a year in Mississippi where, as a northern civil rights supporter, I edited the “Mississippi Free Press.” I knew the black and white activists portrayed in this play.
The greeting is “Meine Damen und Damen.” In German, it means “My ladies and ladies.” Amaluna in Latin means mother and moon. Clearly this is a woman‘s show, by and about women. There‘s even a moon goddess. It‘s not feminist in the sense it has a political message.
But showing women circus performers in roles other than their bodies being tossed around by men is certainly feminist and very welcome. Comparing this to other Cirque du Soleil production‘s I‘ve seen, the distinction was that the women exhibited grace above proficiency in tricks. They are aerialists, trapeze artists, acrobats, tumblers, balancers.
Can an early 18th century French play be hysterically funny and up to the minute in New York? Yes, if the author is David Ives who has turned a 1708 restoration comedy by Jean-FranÒois Regnard into a very witty commentary on greed, including the ethics of cut-throat capitalism. Plus Òa change…
The masterful director is John Rando, who gave us the political satires “Urinetown,” “The Toxic Avenger” and Ives‘ “All in the Timing.” This is one of the best plays of the season.
Ives has crafted a broad modern on a tale about greed written in rhyming couplets at the turn of the century – that is the 17th-to-18th century. It‘s aristocratic (1%) France. Gilt chandeliers adorn a rich man‘s sitting room. His nephew, Eraste (an appealing Dave Quay) in an aquamarine velvet coat, has been waiting around for years to collect a lucrative inheritance. He wants to marry the fetching Isabelle (charming Amelia Pedlow in violet gown), but her mother Madame Argante (a tough, take-no-prisoners Suzanne Bertish) won‘t consent unless he has ready cash.
The Stolen Chair Company did last year‘s brilliant (and Drama Desk nominated) production, “The Man Who Laughs.” So it is no surprise that this season‘s offering is a supremely inventive and clever site-specific production at a Soho bar. It takes place in the People Lounge on Allen Street south of Delancey Street. The admission includes three very exotic, interesting, tasty cocktails!
But more than that, the production is an intimate look – from your fly-on-the-wall vantage point – of what happens at a bar between the bartenders and the patrons and, especially, their romantic connections.
Sarah Ruhl is a very funny clever playwright. Her Stage Kiss is a witty play about acting, especially what happens when two ex-lovers get cast in a play that requires a lot of kissing. That‘s a physical “mannerism” that has a lot of physical impact. I mean, even staged fights don‘t land real blows.
The two actors, She (Jessica Hecht) – is this a satirical jab at Albee? – and He (Dominic Fumusa), both now in their mid-40s, are doing a play from 1932 Broadway. Hecht, one of my favorites, seems always slightly mentally off-key, a comic pose, and Fumusa is a very good slightly angry romantic lead. Angry at this impossible woman, but still turned on by her.
Clever, charming, sometimes funny, this show is always schmaltzy and delightful. I should connect to Carole King, since we both went to Queens College in the early 60s, but I admit I didn‘t know her then. Maybe she was one of the arty folks who hung out in the small cafeteria. Like Paul Simon.
But I connect now! King was an icon of her time, getting past the limitations set for her (˜be a teacher,‘ said her mom), reflecting women‘s desires and hurts, and then great talents. The play is fascinating not only as King‘s story, but as a look into the status of women and the music business of the time.
This musical play about the Cotton Club in Harlem in the 1920s and 30s, a time of the big-band songs of Duke Ellington, is jazz lite. While the numbers are charming, especially those by the five-person dance team and a performer who conjures up Billy Holiday, it‘s missing the gritty reality. It‘s more Broadway than jazz. It‘s what Broadway does to jazz.
Then again, though the Cotton Club performers were black, the patrons were mostly white, and it‘s probably what they wanted.
This collaborative, inventive multi-media play with music is based on a Samizdat dialogue the Czech dissident Havel wrote in 1987, using the device of a popular rural pastime – roasting a pig – to satirize the communist government. It was inspired by the true story of Havel trying to find a pig to roast for his friends.
The performance starts with the excellent mood device of Czech singer Katarina Vizina and Jenny Lee Mitchell of Cabaret Metropol, doing European songs to music redolent of Kurt Weil.
Caryl Churchill is one of my favorite playwrights (“Serious Money,” “Top Girls”) and a major dramatic commentator on the feminist and the political. I am therefore sorry to report my disappointment in her latest work, “Love and Information.” It‘s a pastiche that seems thrown together from notes that needed editing.
The play occurs in a black box lined with graph paper. It pretends to be a commentary on what currently is going on in our technological lives. But it is pedestrian compared to what she has done before. Much of it is incomprehensible.
Let‘s start with the best. A couple meets after years, but their memories don‘t sync. Neither remembers the others memories. It‘s called “EX.” It’s worth quoting in its entirely because it is very clever Churchill.
John Patrick Shanley‘s charming play about two lonely people who don‘t know how to express their feelings is a delightful channeling of Irish black humor. One should add that the two, Anthony Reilly (Brian F. O‘Byrne) and Rosemary Muldoon (Debra Messing) are both quite attractive, so their social awkwardness appears the result of living in an isolated farming corner of Ireland that lets you believe that people can exist for months, even years, without even talking to their neighbors – which when it comes to those two is the case. (So, suspend reality.)
Harold Pinter liked to play games in his plays, teasing the audience, suggesting facts and realities that might or might not be true. He does this in “No Man‘s Land,” written in 1974. It is an acerbic commentary on human nature, with a particular aim at the jugular of the literary set. Pinter‘s prickly style is well served by director Sean Mathias and finely acted by Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, with well-honed support from Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley. If you like intellectual diversions and mysteries, this play is for you.
The setting is a villa, in a strange living room enclosed in round walls of gray squares, almost like a tomb, unusually bare except for a silver bar, a blue/gray rug, a few chairs. Spooner (Ian McKellen) and Hirst (Patrick Stewart), men in their sixties, are getting drunk.
Beckett‘s metaphor for the human condition, of people clutching to each other in the face of man‘s inhumanity to man, turns absurdity into tragedy and occasionally black comedy. Director Sean Mathias has staged, almost choreographed, a dazzling cast in a haunting performance of a poignant, classic play.
Gogo, diminutive of Estragon – that‘s French for tarragon — with bulbous nose and scraggly hair, is portrayed by the excellent Ian McKellen with a Lancashire accent. His jerky, unsteady motions show a man in physical decay.
Didi, diminutive of Vladimir, with a worn suit jacket that may reflect a lost self-image, is played with subtlety by Patrick Stewart, still more in charge of himself, still aware of the irony of their situation. He tells Gogo, “You’d make me laugh if it wasn’t prohibited.”
