Max Wolf Friedlich’s “Job” is a riveting psychological detective story that blurs the lines between truth and deception, sanity and madness. And evil. This taut two-hander, subtly directed by Michael Herwitz, keeps the audience on edge.
With a book by Kristoffer Dias and music and lyrics by singer Alicia Keys, this is presented as Keys’ own story. At least that her “songs and experiences growing up in NY inspire a story made for Broadway.” It turns out “inspire” can be interpreted many ways.
Ali (Maleah Joi Moon) plays Alicia Keys. She is black. Moon’s voice is strong and rich in the show’s jazz, soul and rock. Her mother, Jersey (a fine Shoshana Bean), is white. Davis, her father (a realistic Brandon Victor Dixon), is black. Ali and Jersey live in the huge artists’ cooperative on West 42nd Street near the Hudson River in the neighborhood called Hell’s Kitchen. Davis has nothing to do with the family.
“The Outsiders” by Adam Rapp and Justin Levine is based on a novel written for teenagers by a teenager (she was 16) and tells of kids full of angst. The youths are poor, some suffering from addiction, and they resent kids of their age with money. Some still have dreams of getting out to a better life. So this is about class. And turns out the rich kids don’t feel all that better off.
If you took the white cards explaining many of the “art” works (some colorful shmattas, geometrical designs, my favorite fake art, a display of medicine cabinets), threw them in the air and then attached them haphazardly to any of the works, they would be the same: “this work is about the oppression of (fill in the blanks) and the destruction of (the environment or fill in the blanks) by predatory capitalism.”
David Adjmi’s new play “Stereophonic” strips away the glitter and glamour of 1970s rock to reveal a gritty, often unsettling portrait of creativity, ambition, and toxic relationships. Set in a California recording studio, this engrossing and entertaining behind-the-scenes drama exposes the misogyny and exploitation lurking beneath the counterculture’s rebellious facade.
“Water for Elephants,” book by Rick Elice, music and lyrics by Pigpen Theatre Company, transports audiences to the rough glamour of a Depression-era traveling circus. Based on Sara Gruen’s novel, this musical adaptation is a charming, if somewhat hokey spectacle that relies on stunning choreography and circus acts.
Rebecca Frecknall’s production of “Cabaret” is a raw dive into the seedy underbelly of 1930s Berlin. From the moment you enter the theater, transformed into the infamous Kit Kat Club with its murky red walls and intimate table seatings, you’re transported to a world on the brink of catastrophe.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel is lavishly presented in a musical that captures the glitz and darkness of the Roaring Twenties. The audience enters a world of excess, where everything sparkles – including costumes that shimmer with gold and glitter. The play was pulled out of the book smartly by script writer Kait Herrigan, with music by Jason Howland and lyrics by Nathan Tysen. The director who moves the plot almost cinematically is Marc Bruni.
William F. Brown’s rewrite of the classic “Wizard of Oz” screens the story through the lens of black culture. The best thing about that is the music is jazz, with a bit of R&B. (Music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls.) The old story is for kids. This one is for jazz lovers! “The Wiz” was first staged in 1975, and both Brown and Smalls have since died. But Schele Williams here makes his Broadway debut as a director, assuring long life for the old classic!
“Suffs” is in the category of the iconic “Les Miz.” A revolutionary story put to music to allow the writer to slip in truths about the forces that oppress a country’s heroes, who are, in this case, heroines. In a country that hasn’t been told the truth. Acclaim to Shaina Taub, who created the book, music and lyrics. It’s now a major part of American musical history.
I first heard Libby York in Key West. A classic jazzy cabaret chanteuse. So, of course I wanted to see her at at the Mezzrow Club on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village. She was appearing there with Roni Ben Hur on guitar and Obasi Akoto on bass.
Avignon – When I first visited Spain decades ago, I loved flamenco, which had derived from folk dances of the gypsy culture of Andalusia. They were dances ordinary folks, peasants could do. For centuries, the elites, who despised gypsies, looked down on flamenco as vulgar and performed in seedy places. There’s a curious similarity to what Argentine elites thought of tango.
Avignon – Tango is so iconic that sometimes productions say they are doing tango when it appears not quite so. At least what those of us not aware of changes in the dance believe. “Los Guardiola” is a case. This is today’s tango. Because tango has gone beyond the classic steps to infuse modern dance. And drama. And I liked it!
Avignon – In this graceful, inventive piece by choreographer Wang Junjian, Beijing’s Tuyi Dance Theater presents a plane journey—landing, preparation, and takeoff.
The tarmac is “under the clouds” and the dancers sometimes imitate planes, moving at angles, falling and rising as if they were flying.
Avignon – The place for jazz cabaret at the Avignon OFF is chez Madame Jazz(e), the French-Gabonese chanteuse Abyale Nan Nguema known as Abyale (say A B Al), whose honeyed voice is seductive as she sings the songs made famous by the jazz divas, Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, Josephine Baker and others. She doesn’t imitate them, she pays homage to them.
Avignon – I love tango, but I’ve never seen a tango performance like this. French choreographer Ariane Liautaud takes the iconic Argentine tango as a muse, but challenges its limit to couples dancing à deux.
Avignon – Why are people aggressive, why do they hurt others? How does the tension of life make people aggressive when they don’t want to be? That is the theme of a very contemporary and relevant and very smart dance piece by the Belgian company DTS, which uses hip-hop as a means of expression and reflection on contemporary themes.
Avignon – Chang Chung-An, founder of Taiwan’s Resident Island Dance Theatre, has with great artistry created a work that expresses the difficulties ordinary people have to survive. They are like machines in a factory, repeating the same routines, existing in a time and space defined by society, but it becomes clear that “society” is industrial corporations.
Avignon – Taking off from Charlie Chaplin’s 1931 “City Lights,” this brilliantly scripted and performed mime play takes iconic moments from the film and adds scenes Chaplin would have approved. Directed smartly by Alwina Najem-Meyer, the actors are all excellent, especially Chaplin’s tramp, superbly created by Russian performer Dmitiri Rekatchevski, who was trained by the master, Marcel Marceau, in Paris.
Avignon – I thought I was going to see a theater piece when I entered La Fabrica, a main stage of the Avignon Theater Festival. It turned out to be as much video as stage play. And very avant garde.
Avignon – The Court of Honor is the interior square of the gorgeous Palace of the Popes in Avignon, residence of nine popes from 1305 to 1429 and the most important gothic palace in Europe. It was a residence, place of worship, fortress and administrative city. The hotel where I was staying had a whiteboard for guests’ comments. One scribbled in fury that “Dämon, the funeral of Bergman,” staged there this month was sacrilege.
This is a clever pas de deux by Mario Correa of two important Democratic women in Congress disagreeing about the ideals, commitments, beliefs of their party. Or of those Democrats who purport some values. Nancy (Holland Taylor) in a pink suit (which must denote some female tradition), is quite believable as a politician. She did a memorable turn as Texas governor Ann Richards in “Ann.” Ana Villafaña as AOC in a black pants suit is brilliant in her portrayal. If the real AOC was there, nobody could tell the difference. Playwright Correa, who worked in the congressional office of Constance A. Morella, has got the dialogue and differences down perfectly, the acting is fine, and the staging by director Diane Paulus is direct, as it should be.
This play about a woman war correspondent (of course, she rejects the first adjective) was written by Alexis Scheer, a young playwright whose Broadway debut was adapting the book for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s clever feminist “Bad Cinderella.” Director Jo Bonney is a prominent creative presence in the theater world, a winner of major theater awards and nominations, including Tony and Drama Desk. So, I expected a lot.
“In the West you have no idea….” says the opening voice of a man telling of the joys of Russian songs, picking mushrooms in the forests, laughter in the baths…” In other ways, “Patriots,” written by British playwright Peter Morgan and directed by Rubert Goold, on Broadway after a successful run in London, is based on Brits and Americans having “no idea” of the story it tells. It makes it possible for Morgan to mix fact and propaganda, even in a careless moment admitting as much. So, to find out what was true, I relied on the biography “Putin” by Philip Short, former correspondent for the BBC in Moscow, and acknowledged as the most important book dealing with the characters and period of the play.
Chekhov’s play was first produced in 1899 by the Moscow Art Theatre, directed by Konstantin Stanislavski. It has gone way downhill to Lincoln Center’s production.
Jeidi Schreck’s adaptation of “Uncle Vanya” directed by Lila Neugebauer is soap opera leavened by slapstick, which ruins the Chekhov play. It evokes a sense of sadness, lives of quiet desperation, but no sense of Russia. The set’s picnic table laden with food and wine, backdrop of birch trees, makes it clear this is about the characters’ own desires (eating and drinking) rather than the land they inhabit.
