The Play's the Thing

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, ...

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...

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...

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...

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...