The Play's the Thing

David Rabe's latest play might be called Good for Otto but after sitting through the interminable three hours, I can assure you that what might be good for Otto is bad for everyone else in the theater. I'll admit, I've groaned a time or two after hearing that a show is close to or over three hours long. I mean, the greatest words in the English language are "90 minutes, no intermission" but some of my favorite plays ( Angels in America, Jerusalem , August: Osage County ) are over 180 minutes. Would I like to be in and out and home before 10? Sure. But when the play is engaging and well-written, it doesn't matter. I'd sit through six hours of Jerusalem . The problem with Good for Otto is that it could be 90 minutes, and should be. Characters and passages could easily be cut and the play wouldn't suffer for it. The current incarnation of it on stage at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theater tells me this play needed a bit more development, another worksh...

"What the fuck?" isn't just a lyric that's repeated over and over again in Jerry Springer the Opera but it pretty much sums up my exact feelings about the musical. Now I admit the humor of the show is not the type I typically find funny. I am not one for vulgarity or gross-out humor. But I've seen my fair share of Jerry Springer over the years, so I wasn't surprised at how vulgar the musical was. The surprising thing is that The New Group decided to even produce this show in 2018, fourteen years after it won Best Musical at the Oliviers, when Jerry Springer (and talk shows) have become culturally irrelevant. With social media and the internet and the ease in which someone or something can go "viral," we don't need syndicated talk shows to gain our fifteen minutes of fame. The piece doesn't even play well as a period piece; it is simply dated. Quite frankly, the material in Jerry Springer the Opera isn't even shocking, it's just in...