The Play's the Thing

Okay, look, I get it, two-handers are tough. You have two characters with which to tell your story, and you have to somehow tell this story with as little exposition as possible. You have to show, not tell. Are you listening, Donja Love? Love's current play, Fireflies , tells the story of a married African American couple in 1963. He's a preacher, traveling the southern part of the country to speak at the funerals of other African Americans who have died due to racial terrorism. (When the play begins, the church bombing that claimed the lives of four little girls in Birmingham has just occurs.) She's a doting and devoted housewife who goes so far as to write her husband's speeches and sermons for him. But what her husband, Charles, doesn't know is that she secretly smokes, she wants to abort the baby she's carrying, and she writes explicit letters to a woman she's in love with whom she only met once, briefly. Oh, and did I mention she, Olivia, has PTSD a...

During the writing workshops I took as a student, writers were often told, "you have all of this information in your head but none of it is on the page. We don't know what you know." Someone should've said that to Alexi Kaye Campbell while writing his play Apologia . Apologia takes place in the English countryside house of expat Kristin Miller, who was some sort of political activist (just in title, we never really know what she does per say, but Vietnam is mentioned) and some sort of super famous art historian (I know what you're thinking: those exist?) who has written a memoir that excludes all mention of the sons she basically abandoned when they were children. Oh, yes, and it's her birthday, which is just an excuse for her family to gather at that very moment. Yes, this is a classic version of what I like to call a "family gathers, secrets revealed" play. So Kristin's son, the one who has his shit together, Peter, arrives with his Ameri...

There's something incredibly exciting (for me) about going to a show at Playwrights Horizons. I don't know what it is--maybe it's because two of my favorite theater-going experiences ever were there, Mr. Burns and The Christians, and every time I enter those doors on 42nd street, I think, "will this be another play just like those great ones?" Sadly, they rarely tend to be these days (although, for all their faults, I enjoyed Mankind and Log Cabin .) And for as ambitious as Craig Lucas' new play,  I Was Most Alive With You is, I can't help but say, "c'mon, Craig, less is more." Lucas sets out to write a play loosely based on the Book of Job, highlighting one man's suffering. This man, Ash, who is Jewish, is a successful TV writer (apparently the writer of the longest-running show of all time? No, he's not Matt Groening) who is a recovering addict and let's not forget, did time for domestic abuse. (His Gentile wife, Pleasant, ...

A new revival (revisal?) of One a Clear Day You Can See Forever is now running at the Irish Repertory Theatre. You can make as many changes as you want and rework the book as much as you want but the show is inherently flawed and will probably never work. But the score, oh the score. Which leads me to my next and last point... Nobody, and I mean nobody , is Barbara Harris. See? So don't bother.

The best thing about the new musical This Ain't No Disco is that whenever I hear the title I start to sing one of my favorite Talking Heads songs, "Life During Wartime." And that might be the only good thing about it. Writing a musical about Studio 54 (and the Mudd Club) and New York of the 1970s is a herculean task. Stephen Trask, Rick Elice, and Peter Yankowitz would've been smarter to streamline their plot and focus on the club(s) themselves, make the whole show about owner Steve Rubell and the debauchery of not just the scene but the city. Instead we get an incredibly cliched and sanitized musical about not just the clubs and Rubell but also two young people trying to get famous (although I'm not really sure that's even what they want), drug use, self-harm, incest/rape, a character that is called The Artist (just refer to him as Andy Warhol, for cryin' out loud, we all know who he is supposed to be), someone named Binky, and a trans character, for...

Sometimes a play is so bland, so inert, that it becomes offensive. That play is Fire in Dreamland . That's not to say there aren't a lot of interesting ideas in Rinne Groff's new play. Yes, writing a play about a foreign filmmaker making a movie about the 1911 fire in Coney Island and the disillusioned, aimless woman who becomes obsessed with him and the movie seems like a good idea. Setting it right after Superstorm Sandy is an even better idea. There is much to mine from this. But as a native Brooklynite who knows Coney Island well and lived in the borough during Sandy, it feels like Groff didn't quite understand the neighborhood, it's rich history, and it's long-time struggles. She merely skims the surface of the racism and classism that was evident in the area (before and) after the hurricane. It's as though Groff mentions it because she should but really has no interesting in developing it an idea from it. It's criminally underwritten. If she'...

I saw Tracy Letts' August: Osage County towards the end of its run, and I sat at the Music Box theater completely engrossed, hanging on every word. It was truly edge of your seat theater, and it's still one of my favorite theater-going experiences of all time. And then Letts played George in the magnificent revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , another one of my favorite theater-going experiences, with a performance that remains one of my all-time favorites. After reading/seeing some of his other plays, seeing him act on screen, I was pretty much convinced that the man is a god. So imagine my excitement when Second Stage announced they were transferring Mary Page Marlowe from Steppenwolf. Sometimes your heroes let you down. Look, Letts hasn't let me down completely. The writing of Mary Page Marlowe is still incredibly strong, and it was refreshing to see a play that wasn't trying to be the most topical and timely play in all the land. It's just ...

What do we want from plays? Okay, that's a very broad question. After the first scene of Jordan Harrison's new play Log Cabin , during which the affluent gay characters gather in a fancy New York City apartment (that is no doubt owned, not rented) in 2012 to discuss getting married and...AIDS, I turned to my boyfriend and said, "yes, because gay people only talk about being gay." And that's all of these characters, gay, trans, and straight, talk about. (Well, there's some shoehorned race discussions as well, because that's another hot button issue right now so why not?) We don't know much about them other than they're gay, or trans, or only date trans men. The only other info we get about them is that they are wealthy. Because of course they are. These are gay people who are no longer dying of AIDS, who can now get married, have children, be at least somewhat accepted by and have a place in society, and of course, have trust funds and be succ...

It kind of amazes me that Joshua Harmon has had so many plays produced in such a short period of time. This is not a knock at the quality of his writing or his talent. It's more about content and context. In an ever-changing theater landscape, where theater companies seem to be moving away from plays about affluent white people with affluent white problems, Harmon's plays seem like relics. (Although it's telling that they're produced by companies like Roundabout and Lincoln Center and not more adventurous companies like MCC or even Playwrights Horizons.) His latest offering, Skintight , which opened at, you guessed it, Roundabout, is yet another entry that focuses on very rich white people and their first world problems. Is there still a place in 2018 for a play like Skintight , that revolves around an incredibly wealthy Jewish clothing designer (think Calvin Klein), Elliot, his wealthy lawyer daughter, her over-privileged gay 20 year old son (he's studying Quee...

I have a few complaints about The Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park program, and I basically think the Public is just plain full of it, but now is not the time nor the place. If you are fortunate enough to get tickets to their Shakespeare in the Park productions, it's definitely a great experience, even if the production is sub-par. Even if they're doing Twelfth Night for the four hundredth time. But nothing beats watching some of the greatest pieces of art ever created in the middle of Central Park, in the greatest city in the world, on (hopefully) a beautiful summer night. Their first production this season is Othello , which is my second favorite tragedy and probably third favorite work by Shakespeare. And for some reason, regardless of its compelling and powerful nature and relatable themes, it's not performed very frequently. So I was very, very excited to finally see the Moor of Venice on stage. Ruben Santiago-Hudson's production of Othello is stro...

There are so many things wrong with Anthony Giardina's Dan Cody' Yacht that I don't even know where to begin. As soon as the play began, I couldn't help but think, "no, wait, I saw this play already." It exists in the same vein as Admissions , Joshua Harmon's better written play from last season. We're once again thrown into a prestigious Massachusetts suburban high school (this time a public one) with white parents worrying about their already-privileged children's future at college and beyond. We're immediately introduced, in an opening scene filled with so much exposition that the playwright should be embarrassed, to Kevin, a wealthy single, gay father (yeah, he's gay, just so we're clear that everything that follows does not happen because he wants to get into a woman's pants) who has a job in Finance and knows everything there is to know about Finance and making money and being successful. He knows because he wasn't ver...

Thank God for Stephen Adly Guirgis. By the time the first act of Our Lady of 121st Street ended, I thought, "wow, that was the most enjoyable hour of theater in months." The hour just flew by, and I found myself completely engaged and engrossed in this world on stage. Usually when I'm bored at the theater I find myself trying to see how many episodes of The Simpsons I can name with the names of characters in their titles. At Our Lady of 121st Street , there wasn't a thought of Bart Simpson in, well...sight. That's because Stephen Adly Guirgis' writing clearly shows that he understands people, how they act and talk, and well, he's not full of shit. As someone who was born and raised and has lived in New York City her entire life, it is refreshing and exciting to see characters on stage who think and act and sound like true New Yorkers. Within five minutes of the play's opening scene, I couldn't help but realize that I could relate an anecdote fr...

Coco Chanel is credited as saying, " Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off."  This is advice Dominique Morisseau should've adhered to when she was writing Paradise Blue . There is A LOT of ideas tossed around in this play. It's set in 1949 Detroit and deals with racism, gentrification, being haunted by familial history, trauma, domestic violence, the roles of women, and well, jazz. If that seems like a lot to swallow in one two and a half hour play, you are correct. And understandably, none of it is really fleshed out. Morisseau introduces a bunch of ideas that are just half-baked.  There's a lot to mine from an African American club owner battling with the decision to sell his property in a black area during the time of segregation and Jim Crowe. There's a lot to mine from a musician haunted by the crimes of his father and his own history, something that affects his own music and art. But I didn't think it was explore...

After seeing Clare Barron's new play, Dance Nation , at Playwrights Horizons, I am angry. I am angry that Playwrights Horizons put something so underdeveloped and half-baked on their stage. I am angry that this play represents the state of New York theater these days. I am angry that I won't get those two hours of my life back that I spent suffering through it. (And now I am angry at the raves it received. But nothing should surprise me anymore.) It's the kind of play that would make me swear off theater if I wasn't already excited to see The Beast in the Jungle and Torch Song and The Ferryman . And of course, if I wasn't a masochist. I really don't know what I was expecting from Dance Nation . I was okay with Barron's concept of adults playing the 13 year old girls (it happened in The Wolves and worked beautifully; I wouldn't expect, nor would I want, actual teenagers in this play), and I was even okay with one of them being played by an act...

I have to admit that I get a lot of anxiety whenever I go to Classic Stage Company. It could be because if I'm not sitting on the aisle, I feel very penned in (I have severe claustrophobia). Or because one time I was there and got sick and had to bolt from my seat (that was unfortunately not on the aisle). Or because I have to fight myself to stay awake and alert every damn time I am there. We need to talk, Classic Stage Company. What are you doing? What are you doing? This season alone they produced a dull As You Like It and a criminally boring Twelfth Night, both of which had no spark whatsoever or reason to exist. After they blew it with Shakespeare, they produced the dull and undeveloped Fire and Air , one of the worst things I saw in 2017-2018. And now, they have dug their hooks (in conjunction with the Transport Group) into poor Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke . What did Williams ever do to them to deserve this treatment? This might sound sacrilegious but Su...

Okay, okay, the 2017-2018 season is mercifully over and I've scraped together a list of my favorite shows: Angels in America. I mean, must I say more? Perfect. James McArdle and Denise Gough gave two of my favorite performances of the season. Spongebob Squarepants the Musical. Don't be a snob, see this show. It's smart and hilarious and fun fun fun and Tina Landau's work is excellent. Ethan Slater as the titular sponge gives the best performance in a musical this season. My Fair Lady. Bartlett Sher did it, he did it, he said he'd do it and indeed he did! It's a stunning, beautiful production, and Lauren Ambrose and Harry Hadden-Paton are wonderful as Eliza and Higgins. Eliza could've danced all night but I could've sat and watched this show all night. Torch Song. *takes a moment, gathers myself, gets on my soap box* I am not a religious person, I haven't found God, but you know what? After seeing Torch Song (and The Government Ins...

Although these should come as no surprise to anyone who has spoken with me about theater this season, here's a list of my favorite performances of the 2017-2018 season (in no particular order): James McArdle, Angels in America . I've written at length about McArdle's performance but man, did he nail Louis Ironson. He not only nailed the New York Jewishness of the character (most impressive for a man from Scotland) but succeeded in not making Louise a one-dimensional monster that he is typically seen as. What Louis does is reprehensible but McArdle shows that he is not irredeemable. He also knocked the character's long (and long-winded) monologues out of the park. Tell me more about justice, Louis. Ethan Slater, Spongebob Squarepants . This guy is insanely talented. What a Broadway debut! He is Broadway's brand new triple (or quadruple!) threat; he sings, dances, acts, and even nails the physicality of the role beautifully. Slater carries the whole musical and wi...

I want to preface my thoughts on Miss You Like Hell with a personal note: stories involving mothers are typically my emotional kryptonite. It's why I still can't talk about The Other Place without crying, or why I sobbed during Next to Normal and Grey Gardens , and why I can't listen to "Stay With Me" or "Children and Art," as brilliant as they are. And so, Miss You Like Hell , the new topical musical by Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes and Erin McKeown, despite it's flaws, packs an emotional punch. How could it not? But...is it earned? Yes and no. The concept of Miss You Like Hell isn't quite original but it's still compelling; an immigrant mother from Mexico, Beatriz, attempts to reconnect with her teenage daughter, Olivia, whom she has been estranged from for the last four years. The daughter is only sixteen but has essentially given up on herself (she's sexually promiscuous, has neglected her hygiene, and has even stro...

Walking into Lynn Nottage's latest play, Mlima's Tale, at The Public, I was concerned it would be an upsetting experience. What I didn't realize is that it would be a dull experience. Yes, it is an upsetting experience. How can a play centered on the death of an African elephant not be? But it wasn't as moving as it should have been. Have I been desensitized by the senseless violence and greed we hear about constantly when it comes to animals? Is there anything left to say about the slaughter of innocent animals for wealth? If Mlima's Tale is any indication then no, there isn't. Nottage doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, she doesn't surprise us with this information about the corrupt ivory trade, and quite frankly, I couldn't find it in me to be interested at all. Yes, the device she employs of having Sahr Ngaujah (who never fails to give great performances) portray the titular elephant, and then his tusks, as they travel around ...

More like this flat play, am I right? I think Lindsey Ferrentino is a very talented and versatile playwright but her newest play, This Flat Earth at Playwrights Horizons, is startlingly inept and unfocused. It's as though she threw everything she could at the wall just to see what would stick. This Flat Earth is about the all-too-timely topic of school shootings, and we focus on Julie, a survivor of a recent middle school one. Julie lives with her father in a small walk up apartment in a New England town. It's quickly evident that this family isn't as well off as the other students in the school; they live in an apartment, Julie doesn't have a cell phone or laptop, and has to rent her violin for the school orchestra. And she is, understandably, having a hard time adjusting to things after the shooting. But her character is all over the place--she's inappropriate and cracks jokes about dead students, she's terrified of the noises she hears in the middle of t...