The Play's the Thing

I once read an article about Terrence McNally where the playwright said something along the lines of how he doesn't believe in workshopping his plays, and doesn't see the need for them. Sure, that's okay to say when you've had the storied career he has but I'm really not sure if that's the best way to go for emerging playwrights who do not have four Tony awards. After seeing the world premiere of his latest play, Fire and Air at Classic Stage Company, I think he probably should rethink his policy on workshops. I'm not saying a workshop would've really helped this play but perhaps a re-write or two would have. Bottom line, whatever it is on stage should not be the finished product. Fire and Air focuses on Sergei Diaghilev (played here by Douglas Hodge), founder of the Ballet Russes, and his obsession with Vaslav Nijinsky. It is essentially a character study of Diaghilev, and McNally explores his struggles, both personally and professionally. What th...

Miles for Mary by The Mad Ones, seen at the Bushwick Starr in 2016, has been remounted at Playwrights Horizons as part of the non-profit's Redux Series . The play, directed by the prolific and one of the best in the game, Lia Neugerbauer (surprisingly making her Playwrights Horizons debut), focuses on a committee of teachers at an Ohio high school in 1988 as they plan the annual Miles for Mary telethon. Mary was a promising student athlete at the school who tragically died in a car accident. The event raises money for a college scholarship for other promising athletes at the school. Anyone who has been on a committee of some kind will be able to relate to many of the proceedings at hand: the arduous decision making process, not being able to get your voice/opinions heard, and having to accept you can't always get what you want. Although the events of the play feel familiar and honest, they're honestly not that compelling. According to The Mad Ones' website, the gr...

Disco Pigs, the 20th anniversary revival now playing at the Irish Repertory Theater, and Ballyturk , making its US premiere at St. Anne's Warehouse, are my second and third Enda Walsh experiences. (Well, fourth, if you count the Tony award-winning book to the musical Once .) The first being last season's Arlington , which I truly, truly disliked. It had so much promise for me, someone who is a fan of dystopian, speculative stories, and yet, it was an incomprehensible bore. Fool me once, shame on you. And yet, I was somehow excited for Disco Pigs, thanks to a glowing response from a friend who saw the same production in London. But as it got closer to showtime, I had a little trepidation about understanding it. You see, Disco Pigs is written in a mix of Cork dialect and the secret language the two characters, Pig and Runt, have created for themselves. I had nothing to worry about, ultimately. I found that so long as I focused on the language, I had no problem following any...

For me, Playwrights Horizons is best described by a lyric from Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Sunday in the Park With George (that, coincidentally, originated at the non-profit), "what matters is the means not the ends." I often admire how diverse their slate of artists tend to be, and how interesting, compelling, and exciting their offerings sound. And make no mistake, they have produced plays I love, by playwrights and artists I idolize. And then often times, the shows don't deliver on their promise. Especially this season. Sarah Ruhl's For Peter Pan On Her Seventieth Birthday felt half-baked, like a poor attempt at Annie Baker's brilliant mundanity, and Max Posner's The Treasurer, although anchored by a terrific performance by Peter Friedman, was a bore.  Their third offering of the 2017-2018 season is Robert O'Hara's Mankind . O'Hara imagines a future where women have become extinct due to the tre...